


Resurgence

by Bluerider



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-24 21:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluerider/pseuds/Bluerider
Summary: A slant on issues arising from the revelation of SG's identity to LL. I don't really watch much TV so individuals might well be OOC. Divergences from the show will be apparent to those who do watch it. Warning: no actual rape of anyone but there are references to the concept.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 108
Kudos: 235





	1. Perspective

**Chapter 1**

“Miss Luthor?”

Lena looked up and gave one the few genuine smiles she was capable of today. “Jess? What is it?”

“A Director Henshaw has asked to you go to him, something about documents to sign?”

Lena lost her smile. She shook her head. “Tell him I have no time to spare to leave the building. He can send the documents here.”

Jess nodded and ducked out. She was back in two minutes. “Miss Luthor, he asks if he may bring them over himself. He doesn’t mind how late it might be.”

Lena checked her schedule. “Is he planning on coming alone?”

“I asked him that. He said he’d bring a few people with him.” Jess paused. “Actually, quite a few.” She looked worried.

Lena did not. “Tell him we’ll call back with a time. Then book us conference room 37-01 for the night. I’ll let you know in few minutes what time we’ll begin and you can tell Henshaw then. Thanks, Jess.” She was already on the phone to her attorneys when Jess ducked back out.

...

Lucy Lane stopped at the entrance to the DEO and frowned. “I was just told to come and oversee the signing of an NDA. Why are there so many of us for that?”

J’onn, Alex, Brainy, Nia, James, and Supergirl were all there. Alex said, “Lena Luthor was told Supergirl’s identity yesterday, at the Kara’s Pulitzer ceremony. We’re going to L-Corp for the signing and …” she sighed, “we’ve all become Lena’s friends. We’d like to properly welcome her to the fold, so to speak.”

“So it’s just a matter of seeing she signs in the right places and explaining anything she doesn’t understand?”

“Yup, pretty much.”

Which was why Lucy arrived at L-Corp completely unprepared.

...

At 8pm, Lena swept into the conference room and took her seat. “Good evening. The documents?”

There was a tiny ripple of unease at the lack of personal greetings. It was the first sign that perhaps all was not well.

Lucy passed her a thick document. The top of it was headed Non-Disclosure Agreement. Lena reviewed it quickly then laid it down. She made no move to sign it but instead looked directly at Lucy. They hadn’t met before.

“You’re the legal representative?”

Lucy nodded. “Major Lucy Lane, Miss Luthor. Thank you for making time for us so late.”

Lena looked at her pensively. “If a man goes to a woman under cover of dark or disguise, and she, believing him to be her boyfriend, willingly engages in physical intimacy with him before discovering her mistake, is that rape? Is that a violation?”

Lucy could feel the puzzlement and beginnings of real dread around the table. Supergirl’s eyes were already moistening.

Lena went on, “I think most women would say yes, because in matters of trust and intimacy, identity is so crucial that _mistaken_ identity nullifies consent.“

She waited for Lucy to disagree, but Lucy laid her pen down with a quiet click, saying nothing. Not only was Lena in principle correct but there was obviously a lot Lucy hadn’t been told. It was unwise to interrupt at this point.

Lena turned to Supergirl. “Has it occurred to you that intimate matters I confided to Kara Danvers were not ones I wished to confide in Supergirl? You denied me the choice. By actively encouraging those intimacies while you kept up your deception, you took premeditated steps to violate me. Every single time I confided in Kara Danvers something I didn’t want Supergirl to know was a violation because I … did … not … consent.”

Supergirl’s tears were flowing unrestrained as the full severity of her continued deception was borne in on her. Around the table there were various looks of shock and guilt. Apparently, Lucy thought, no one had anticipated Lena’s view, though if the circumstances Lena was alluding to were true (and no one was denying it), she couldn’t understand why. It might be years before anyone was told a Superhero’s identity and it was usually done out of necessity, but inviting confidences without imparting any was done for espionage, against _opponents_ , and she’d been told they were all friends of Lena’s.

As the DEO’s legal representative, it was Lucy’s primary duty to defend the DEO as best she could. But they were not in a court of law here. There were no points of evidence or curial procedure she could nitpick to get a case thrown out. Lena’s complaint was not even chargeable in a court of law. It was a point of morality and personal integrity and as a woman herself, one could see the analogy all too clearly, Lucy didn't have enough hypocrisy in her to defend what was indefensible. She maintained a stony silence.

“I’m assuming, Brainy, that you and Nia also know Supergirl’s human identity?” Lena had resumed her initial mild tone, which was now fooling no one as to the danger behind it.

Brainy nodded.

Lena mulled over this. “I can understand not telling secrets that aren’t yours to tell. I don’t fault any of you for that. But it went beyond simply not telling, didn’t it? I don’t count the first year because a secret like that is not told casually to strangers or even new friends. I don’t count professional obligations either because I understand those all too well. Let’s consider all the so-called ‘family’ occasions – am I correct in concluding that of everyone who attended, only Sam and I were not privy to this secret?”

Alex said in a quiet, shamed voice, “Yes.”

“So, considering everything that’s happened at least over these last two years, it seems me impossible that the deception was sustained without any of you taking deliberate steps to preserve it, if nothing else by omission when circumstances invited disclosure. Can any of you look me in the eye and deny that?”

No one did.

“So …” Lena continued her train of thought, “clearly, your personal obligations to ...” she waved a dismissive hand at Supergirl, “whatever her name is …”

“It’s Kara Zor-El,” Kara said clearly through sniffles.

“… outweighed whatever personal obligations you felt you had towards me …” Lena went on as if uninterrupted, “… which begs the question whether any of you ever felt _any_ personal obligations towards me.” The horrid resignation in her quiet voice carried with vast emotional impact to everyone in the room except Lucy. But even Lucy was hard pressed not to feel sympathy for someone who expected never to be owed anything personal by anyone.

“I never expected any of you to like me. I never expected to be given priority over anyone else. But I think it was justified for me to expect at least one of you to display some sense of ethics. Why were Sam and I even invited to these purely personal occasions? To actively encourage further trust and confidence, obviously. Were you _grooming_ us for further violation?” She cast an accusing eye at the others. “What were you intending for Sam? For _Ruby_?” She sounded suddenly an order of magnitude more dangerous.

“Nothing!” Alex said desperately. “Lena, it wasn’t like that. Whatever sense of friendship and family you felt was real. It’s not true that we don’t feel personal obligations to you. You’ve saved us over and over again. You’ve done things for each of us you didn’t have to.”

Lena gazed her with no change in expression. Assertions were easy to make. Lucy would have discounted them – and Lena’s complete scepticism was obvious.

“It was my fault!” Kara burst out. “I asked them to keep my secret. Be angry with me, not them.”

Lena shrugged. “They agreed. _That_ is on them. And let’s be clear. I’m not angry. I was furious to begin with, I don’t deny that. But now, I am simply seeing with increasing clarity where I stand. Like I said, their loyalty to you outweighed any loyalty, any gratitude, each of them felt to me personally.” She undid the top button of her shirt roughly. “From my perspective, you all decided that for whatever reason, I was fair game for violation by Kara, helped by all of you acting as a gang. You’ve violated my trust, you’ve violated my heart. It seems to me that all you need for your victory to be complete is for the rest of you to pin my limbs down and while one of you hands Kara a strap-on. Because really, what else is left?”

Kara burst into full out sobbing at the ugly accusation.

“Lena,” Alex protested.

“Don’t you dare invalidate my feelings! Why don’t you take a minute to put yourself in my shoes?” Lena demanded. “Has any of you even taken the trouble to do that? If you knew only what I know, how the hell _else_ would you feel?”

“Lena,” J’onn began, “Kara has always stood up for you even against us and she was right to do that. It was we who warned her time and again against disclosure to you. Her regard for you, her belief in you, has always been real and we have acknowledged that she was justified.”

Lena stared at him for so long that even the powerful Martian began to look confused and uncomfortable.

“So she was acting under orders? The _Nazi_ defence? Really?”

Kara’s sobbing grew louder. Lena ignored it. “So the most visible defender of truth and justice in National City, quite blatantly an adult, can’t make moral decisions about how she conducts her personal life? She … what … abdicates all responsibility for any of those?”

“NO!” Kara begged. “I _am_ responsible. I’m not an employee of the DEO, just an ally. In the end it was always my decision. I wanted to protect you …”

Lena turned her stare towards Kara. “ _How?_ ” she asked, incredulous.

“I didn’t want you to have more enemies than you already have!” Kara hiccupped. “MY enemies added to your own!”

"But they wouldn’t have _known_ I knew! How _could_ they have if to all and sundry I continued to have no association with Supergirl beyond being just one of the many National City residents that you save every day?” Lena was quite honestly baffled by Kara’s reasoning. “The danger you’re speaking of comes from enemies of yours knowing who you care about. It doesn’t come from us knowing who you are. Seriously, how do you get from telling me Kara Danvers is Supergirl straight to ‘bad guys will know that Kara Danvers is Supergirl _and_ friends with Lena’ or ‘bad guys know that Lena knows who Supergirl is?”

Silence. Lucy tried to find a flaw in the reasoning but knew she wouldn’t be able to. This short acquaintance with Lena Luthor had already told her the woman was as logical as they come.

“And,” Lena continued, “if any bad guy already knew all that, how does it protect me not to know who to watch for, what kind of precautions to take? If anything, _not_ knowing made me little more than a lamb brought to slaughter!”

More silence.

“So, that reasoning holds no water. Here’s another point. At any time in the last few years, I could have been in a public setting with Kara Danvers when some lunatic opened up on the crowd with a sub-machine gun. I could have stepped in front of a bullet for her. For Kara Danvers I _would_ have.”

Lucy believed her.

“There would have been no guarantee that even you would have been able to stop all the bullets if I stepped in front of you at the very last split second. So I would have died an unnecessary death but apparently, that would have been preferable to revealing your identity to me.” Lena studied Kara dispassionately. “You left me alone in a room with Mercy when she had the ability and the opportunity for a short interval to put a clipful of bullets in my head. You could have averted the danger in seconds but you still chose to keep your identity from me at the actual risk of my life even then. You won’t kill, so you couldn’t kill Mercy and so she would have known who you were, but it seems that to preserve your no-kill record, you were willing to risk me dying.”

Lucy didn’t miss the sudden change in atmosphere, the odd glance flicking towards J’onn and back.

Neither did Lena. Folding her arms, she said, “Oh. So killing Mercy wouldn’t even have been necessary to preserve your secret? You just risked my life because it was more important to keep that secret from me even as late as that?” She frowned. “You’ve risked yourself to save me. Yet you’d risk my life to preserve your identity from me. So that was more important than even your own life. Why? Is it because my knowledge of your identity would have endangered more lives than just your own?”

James coughed. “Yes, the lives of those Kara’s close to, and the lives of the everyone in the DEO. But even so, when you were poisoned, Kara flew you to the DEO in her civilian clothes because time was short. So she risked revealing herself to others then.”

“But still not me!” Lena threw her hands up. “The inconsistency makes no sense! Why was _I_ singled out over everyone, including the public, to remain ignorant? And once again, how was the risk to all of you increased if telling me would have changed _nothing_ in the eyes of the public?”

Her gaze sharpened and she inhaled audibly as a new thought occurred to her. She paled. “If you had told me who you were before the first Daxamite ship got here, the first thing I would have done when I found out Rhea was an alien was tell you about it. And I’m pretty certain that whatever might have happened after that, I would _never_ have completed the portal for her so unquestioningly.” Her voice rose in agitation. “Do you _know_ how many people died in the attack after the rest of the Daxamites came through? All this time, I’ve been taking partial responsibility for being such easy prey for Rhea. And all the time you had all the information that would have made me stop the work before completion. What did keeping your secret from me, after I had saved the alien population from Medusa, after I had put my own mother in prison, what did keeping that secret from me then cost? 7,852 lives, Supergirl! Not mention another 985 permanently maimed or reduced to a vegetative state. And of those 7,852 lives, 476 were _children_! And you say Supers don’t kill?”

Abruptly she rose. “I need to be excused for a minute while I process this.” She was out of the room before anyone could react.

Lucy could see that Kara was white with shock. Lena’s eyes had drilled into her with accusing force. And while Lucy wanted to help in some way, she didn’t know enough about the circumstances discussed to be able to do so. Besides, no one else including Kara was saying anything in her defence. Lucy couldn’t do her work if she had nothing to work with.

To Kara’s credit, she wasn’t fleeing the room - although after Lena had accused her of not taking responsibility, it would have been pathetic if she did. Alex had come to her side and was sliding an arm around her but Kara shook her head and gently shrugged it off, as if she felt she didn’t deserve the comfort.

After another three minutes, Lena came in, her boardroom calm restored. She resumed her seat. “So. Protecting me, protecting anyone else, was an invalid reason for your continuing deception. An eighth grader could have pointed out that flaw in your logic and you are a lot smarter than an eighth grader. Do you have any other reason?”

“I told you yesterday. I didn’t want to lose you,” Kara said in a small voice.

“How’s that working out for you?” Lena sighed wearily.

Lucy noted with considerable surprise that was no punch to it. In fact, Lena had displayed nothing more than sternness and severe aggravation where Lucy would have expected hurt and fury. This was remarkable. She wondered if she should be worried by that.

“Lena, you were the only one who loved me for being only Kara. It meant so much to me. It was how I grew up, being only Kara, before I came to Earth. You didn’t have expectations beyond that. I could relax and be me and show you my uncertainties and sadness and not put on the front that everyone else who knows me as Supergirl expects. I needed that. When I talked about myself with you, everything I said was real … just out of context, but real. And things were never as good between you and Supergirl. I was afraid once you knew I was her, Kara Danvers would lose you.”

"So it was purely selfish.”

"Yes, as I said yesterday,” Kara admitted readily. "Each time I was on the verge of telling you, someone let you down badly or did something horribly distressing to you and I just couldn't bring myself to add to that at the same time. So then I'd put it off but before a decent interval had passed it would happen again or you'd be unhappy with Supergirl and ... well ..." she shrugged helplessly and looked down.

Lena exhaled and leaned back. “At least that makes sense.”

Everyone gaped at her.

She shrugged. “What? She’s never been perfect, why should any of you, why should I, expect that she should be? I can accept that she did a wrong thing, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. It’s something I can see myself forgiving when it’s not so raw. It’s not like I have the energy to drag around the weight of resentment. At the end of the day it’s her identity and her secret and she’s entitled to keep it. She’s just not entitled to encourage levels of intimacy she has no intention of reciprocating. So okay. We’ve dealt with that. Let’s move on. Now it’s the unending sheer _godforsaken_ hypocrisy that’s really getting on my last nerve.”

She glared at them all. “You have the gall, while keeping this secret from me, to get angry at me for preserving my friend’s medical confidentiality, for protecting her from an organisation about which I knew nothing except that you might harm her, for synthesizing kryptonite to save your lives?! Oh, but of course, you are the _good_ guys! _Any_ means to your ends is fine, isn’t it? Because you are the defenders of truth and justice. And if the means to your ends involves denying Lena Luthor her privacy and her honour towards her friends, if it involves lying to her, raping her every emotional orifice, well, that’s all fine because somehow she deserves it, and you are the heroes so you get to do that for years with absolute impunity?”

“I’m sorry!” Kara sobbed. “I’m so …”

“Great. That makes it all better then, doesn’t it?” Lena flashed back irritably.

Alex swallowed. “Lena, I swear to you, we never intended to hurt you like that.”

“I don’t care what you intended!” Lena snapped. “This is how I feel! This is the effect regardless of your intent. And on top of all _that_ , you now have the unmitigated effrontery to present me with _this_?”

She lifted the NDA and dropped it back on the table, turning to Lucy. “I am a citizen of what is supposed to be a free country, a democracy. Are you now telling me I am bound by laws that are not available to the public to read? How the hell is it that even constitutionally valid?”

Lucy shook her head. “The constitution of the DEO is off the statute books. It exists by confidential executive decree.”

“I am not contesting the validity of the DEO’s existence. I am arguing that I am in no way bound by law to sign this document. Show me the law that says I must.”

“I can’t.”

“Lucy?” J’onn looked stunned.

“Miss Luthor is right. The NDA is just that, an agreement, a contract. Contracts are to be freely entered into. Lack of consent renders invalid any contract that purports to have been signed. Any and all NDAs that have been signed with the DEO to date have been signed voluntarily.”

“Including the earlier NDAs I signed in exchange for access to the DEO’s premises,” Lena pointed out. “Speaking of contracts, Major Lane, a valid contract requires mutual consideration, does it not?”

Lucy nodded.

“So with a typical NDA, what is the consideration for the signatory?”

Lucy sighed inwardly and said, “The sensitive information to be released to said signatory.”

“But I originally received the information from _Lex_ ,” Lena pointed out another thing Lucy had not known. Judging by their faces, neither had the others. “And when Kara subsequently told me yesterday, she asked nothing for it. So the DEO is no longer in a position to offer me sensitive information about Supergirl’s identity. Which means, does it not, Major Lane, that even if I did sign this document, it would have no contractual force?”

Defeated, Lucy conceded. “You’re right. Again.” She felt like smacking J’onn and Alex for a completely inadequate and inapposite briefing.

"Well, I refuse to sign useless documents. I would also refuse to sign any document that does nothing but pile obligations on me without any rights flowing to me in return, so there’s no point re-working this into a deed, Major Lane.”

Lucy groaned and rested her forehead in her hands for a second.

There was a long silence. No one seemed to know how to take control of the meeting from Lena, who gazed unseeingly at the opposite wall as her mind worked.

Eventually she said, “You know, I can accept that the help and support and assistance I’ve received from all of you in the past was genuine. Even though any trust in me was revoked at the drop of a hat …”

Alex flinched.

“ … I accept that when it was offered, when affection was offered, all of it was sincere for the time being. But here’s the thing. As I did with Sam, I will _always_ make the choice that seems to me to be the right and honourable choice, not the choice that makes me popular with the so-called ‘family’. I did that with the Luthors, I did it with you, and I intend to continue doing that. I know full well twice over now what it is to be the lowest member of the so-called family totem pole, to be immovable from that position and have trust and affection withdrawn the moment anyone higher than me on that totem pole, which is everyone, doesn’t like what I do. I am not a donkey to be lured by retractable ‘love’ like a carrot on a stick. And clearly, no matter how long I’ve been around, the next new person is evidently going to edge in above me. Well, I don’t need to experience it anymore. I refuse to pander to your individual and collective paranoias. I refuse to be only one in the so-called family with no right to privacy. I refuse to be associated any longer with an organisation that has no accountability for any abuse of the basic rights every sentient being ought to enjoy, especially when its people have violated me continuously for years despite my giving them no cause for it. I refuse to not be me. So let’s just stop this … farce and call it like it is.

 _You_ are the family the members of which enjoy trust and the benefit of the doubt no matter what you do, no matter what means you individually or collectively employ towards your end. _I_ will be the outlying asset against external adversity and we can be civil to each other … until the next time I do something one of you doesn’t like. I simply don’t have the energy anymore for disillusionment, hate or drama of any kind because honestly, the only thing I don’t doubt about you is that your professional intentions are good. But as to the actions you consider yourselves justified in taking to achieve your ends, and as to your personal ethics? I don’t know how not to question everything you do and everything you say anymore.”

She rose. “Director, I choose not to reveal Supergirl’s identity because unlike all of you, I _do_ have personal integrity. If you’re going to make me disappear for refusing to sign a pointless document, I hope you will have the decency to give whatever team comes after me a kill order rather than one intended for me to be confined indefinitely.”

J’onn cleared his throat, looking embarrassed and reluctant. “Lena, I am sorry, truly, but our standard operating procedure requires …”

Lucy cut him off. If he continued to press the point, he would travel beyond moral inconsistency straight into moral bankruptcy. She was willing to go into shades of gray for the DEO, but to imprison a woman, one who already felt violated by them, for refusing to do something she was completely entitled by law to refuse to do was beyond the pale. “Director, we can leave it there for the moment. Miss Luthor, I am giving you an attorney’s undertaking that if this becomes an issue, you will be informed before any action is taken.”

Lena nodded. “I trust you can all see yourselves out. Until you do, the room is yours.”

The quiet click of the door behind her was louder than a gunshot.

…

Back at the DEO, they re-convened minus Nia who, knowing Lena the least well, went home, unable to listen to any more. On the journey back, Lucy had received a more detailed recounting of the way Kara’s relationship with Lena had developed and how the others knew Lena.

Kara opened with, “I have to make this right. I have to find a way.”

“She’s not ready to hear an apology,” Lucy pointed out.

“But our friendship was real!” Kara protested. “If I can convince her of that …”

Lucy said, “She _knows_ that, Kara! She said that. She just doesn’t know what your friendship is _worth_ anymore if you could do this to a real friend. She doesn’t know what being friends with _any_ of you is worth if you could collude in that.”

“But I can keep being good to her as far she’ll let me,” Kara argued with a hint of desperation.

Brainy said in a heavy voice, “Lena assisted me to focus when I was panicking. It was incorrect for me not to attempt to persuade Kara to tell her earlier, or to tell Kara that I refused to participate in deceiving her any longer. I am unaccustomed to this … feeling.”

“Welcome to the world of guilt,” Alex said sardonically, but she looked terrible herself. “We’ll just have to make sure she knows she’s still our friend even if we’re not her friends.”

“How?” Kara asked eagerly. “I mean, I could bring her things, like food, because she forgets to take care of herself, and …”

“NO!” Lucy groaned loudly.

Everyone stared at her.

“Oh, come ON! You heard how she thinks about this. If you think that forcing the victim of a gang-rape to be friends with the people who gang-raped her is anything but cruel and inhumane, and likely to cause irreparable mental or emotional harm, you’re all insane!” Lucy cried.

“Lucy,” Alex protested. “Surely that’s too harsh.”

“There’s fucking case law on this, Alex! Don’t you ‘too harsh’ me!” Lucy shouted.

“ _What?_ ” Kara’s voice was hoarse with shock. “What do you mean, Lucy? Did I … did I do something _criminal_ to Lena?”

“No,” Lucy said stiffly. “There is no definition of rape in criminal law that doesn’t have a physical component. I am saying the hypothetical Lena drew about the woman who slept with the wrong man has actually occurred before. I’m saying that the analogy she drew is apt and that she cannot be blamed at all for feeling violated. And what she feels right now is the only thing that is important to how to go forward with her. You have to let her be. I can’t say for how long, but at some point maybe it won’t be so raw.”

At the crushed looks around her, Lucy sighed. “Look, Lena is definitely sane and logical. And probably very, very hurt. But what I got from the meeting is that she can’t reconcile friendship with what you all did. To be honest, I don’t know if anyone could.”

“We aren’t denying that we did wrong by her,” James pointed out. “In fact, we’re discussing how to redress it.”

“But you _are_ denying how _serious_ that wrong was!” Lucy’s voice rose again without her own volition. “And you’re denying it because the analogy to actual rape is hard to hear. You don’t want to believe you could have acted so poorly to an innocent person. Has any of you actually done as she suggested? Has any one of you even truly attempted to put yourself in her position? Alex, have you actually tried to imagine yourself being violated by someone you considered a friend? Violated time and time again and then dragged by that friend into a group of people who collaborated to enable more of the same?”

Alex blanched. Every last iota of resistance melted away.

“There, you see?” Lucy ploughed on relentlessly. “I would cut the balls and tits off anyone who did that to me and I know you well enough: you would too! So don’t give me any crap that belittles Lena’s reaction. Compared to what ours would have been, she’s been damned moderate. And maybe it’s because I’m not involved in any of this that I have no difficulty in saying that your behaviour collectively was wholly immoral. Kara, you did this continuously, time after time, with premeditation, for _years_ beyond the point when it would have been even marginally acceptable. You caused the ganging up. It’s frankly quite astonishing to me that she’s even willing to work with any of you at this point. She must know it’s a risk to her own emotional health.”

She turned to J’onn. “J’onn, the SOP for the DEO is just that, _standard_ procedure. There is room for exceptions in circumstances that warrant it. These in my opinion warrant it. Do NOT go after Lena. She’s probably got a full brief ready for her attorneys which she’s withholding pending any unexplained disappearance. Why else do you think she had the confidence to come alone to meet us? If they get that, they’ll file suit against the government and you personally in open court for false imprisonment, breach of natural justice and habeas corpus. And that’s just off the top of my head. The public stink they and her PR people will kick up will lead to full public disclosure of the DEO and every single person, human or alien, held without trial as a prisoner of conscience. I can live with those who are now confined, but as things stand, Lena Luthor would be a prisoner on MY conscience and I won’t have it!”

“J’onn,” Kara said quiveringly, “if you go after her, I’ll _never_ work with the DEO again. Ever. I don’t _care_ if it means that Earth gets overrun by aliens. I’ve had enough of this means-to-an-end approach the DEO adopts. I let you and Alex and everyone else persuade me not to tell Lena the moment I knew without doubt she could be trusted, after she put her own mother in prison. I take responsibility for not telling her during the later years but that paranoid consequence is on you. She saved your life then!”

“I know,” J’onn said sadly. “I am truly sorry for it now. But I have responsibility for the lives of everyone in this department.”

“It doesn’t exempt you from being as ethical as you can be!” Kara cried. “Black ops does not mean you get to do whatever you want. Do you even understand now that we are part of the reason for the Daxamite invasion and the lives it destroyed? If I had felt free to tell Lena about my identity, I would have told her all about Mon-El and Rhea or she would have asked me to meet Rhea before completing the work she was given and then we would all have known what was going on and she would never have made that damn portal. I don’t say that secrecy is unwarranted but all of that was caused by _needless_ secrecy from the one person we _should_ have told! You let Mon-El run free in the DEO, you let James in, but the one person who had already proven herself you did not! I don’t doubt your good intentions, J’onn, but I doubt your judgment now! The Ku Klux Klan hanged people for the colour of their skin, not because they did wrong. All of you condemned Lena for her last name, not because she did wrong. How are you any different from the Klan? Lex Luthor targeted Superman because he feared what Superman might do despite all the good Superman had already done. You suspected and kept on suspecting Lena because of what you feared she might do despite all the good _she_ had already done. How was your thinking so different from Lex’s?”

Seeing the visible effect she was having in James’s, Alex’s and J’onn’s shaken expressions, Kara was encouraged to continue. “I didn’t advocate for her just because I liked her and believed in her. I did it because it was common justice for anyone! And all you lot had to say against it was that I was naïve and too optimistic about people? Well, look where your experience and cynicism have led us, led ME! I am grateful for your protectiveness, all of you, but how could you possibly think I’d want it on my conscience that you protected me at the expense of innocent people?! And now because of that, because I let myself get infected by it, and then because I was a coward, I’ve lost the best of them. No, _we’ve_ lost the best of them. And we may _never_ get her back. I don’t know if I can forgive you all for that. I don’t know if I can forgive myself.”

She stood suddenly, her chair hitting the wall behind her with the controlled violence of her movement. Ignoring even Alex's attempts to talk to her, she flung out of the room and took off.


	2. Holding Pattern

**Chapter 2**

“Kara!” James called.

Kara did an about-turn and came into his office. Her pace was leaden compared to its usual briskness and her head drooped. Her eyes were still puffy from an all night crying jag. She couldn’t get out of her mind the look on Lena’s face when she had left the room, an amalgam of exhaustion, confusion and disgust. The memory of that look had had her throwing up several times during the night.

“L-Corp’s just announced a press conference to take place in front of its headquarters in an hour.” James was tired and depressed, unhappy with the whole superfriends group and _desperately_ unhappy with himself. His tone reflected this.

“Oh. Okay. Do you want me to cover it?” She was going to no matter what he said. Lena’s public appearances had never been unattended by danger.

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll be hovering high up overhead then,” Kara decided. “I’ll look for trouble but I’ll also be watching and listening for what’s said.”

“Go for it.”

…

Five minutes later, J’onn received requests for personal time off for the morning from Brainy, Nia and Alex. He approved them all. Lucy had gone back to the capital still seething. He was disinclined to incur any more of her ire and feeling hugely guilty and he knew the others were too.

…

Lena waited at the podium outside L-Corp until the second hand on her watch hit twelve. “Good day, thank you for coming.”

The bustle and the babble died down. The ranks in front of her were filled by the press. Behind them was a sizeable crowd that had left their lunches and coffees to see what the gathering was about. TV cameras hovered in the air hoisted on shoulders or tripods. At the edges of the crowd, Lena was a little surprised to espy Alex Danvers with Brainy and Nia. They were trying to blend in. Lena nearly smiled at their lack of success, but she really only cared that she wouldn't have to interact with them.

“I am announcing the establishment of a new non-profit organisation with seed capital donated by L-Corp. In the past few years, this city and the world have faced serious danger on multiple occasions. The city has been proud of the way its emergency services and its people have responded to these and rightly so. But it has also been saved by superheroes. Many of those arrived from elsewhere and then left when they were no longer needed. Supergirl stayed. She’s stayed and continued to help us on a daily basis. And we smile and say thank you and that’s great. But I want you consider what we are if that is _all_ we do.”

She paused. “I don’t care to know what Supergirl needs for subsistence, to maintain herself and her energy in order to keep on helping us. I imagine that it would be dangerous for anyone to know and dangerous for her. But make no mistake, she isn’t a mythical being who subsists on fresh air alone. So we do know she must need _something_. This charity will provide a fixed stipend for her basic needs. Any surplus at financial year end will be donated to other charities of her choosing. The stipend will be same whether she saves a bank from being robbed or a kitten from a tree so it cannot be said that she discriminates in the help she gives for monetary reasons.

The truth is, she has already done enough for this city to merit a retirement fund several times over. She didn’t have to do any of it. She chose to. She wanted to. I have no doubt that she would refuse a retirement fund. I have no doubt that even if this charity weren’t established she would continue to help. So L-Corp isn’t really doing it for her. L-Corp’s doing it for the people, for our future. Because if we are ungrateful, if we take her for granted, if we’re undeserving, when the next attack comes, why should anyone else want to help us? I am asking the public to donate a penny, a dollar, ten dollars, whatever you can. It’ll be just as tax deductible as any other charitable donation. I am asking the government and businesses she’s saved to do the right thing and add to the seed capital the interest from which the stipend will be paid. I am asking the national government to talk to the governments of other countries whose citizens she’s saved and ask _them_ to contribute. As external contributions are made to the seed fund, L-Corp's contribution will be decreased correspondingly to the point where it cannot be said that Supergirl might have a special interest in us or we in her. This non-profit will be as open to scrutiny by the authorities as any other.”

Another pause. “We have time for a couple for questions. Hands up and I’ll point to you.”

The first couple of questions were innocuous, expected questions. Lena answered them without trouble. The third reporter was clearly aiming for a splash.

“Miss Luthor, do you have a hidden agenda for this charity?”

Lena didn’t miss a beat. “Such as?”

A wave of laughter.

“I mean, the Children’s Hospital, the public libraries, animal shelters, clinics set up as charities by me and by L-Corp have now been around for three years. Have you discovered a hidden agenda behind them yet?”

“You’re a Luthor!” The reporter shouted. “Are you planning to ingratiate yourself to a Super so she won’t think less of you? Lull her into considering you not a threat?”

Lena eyed him with considerable disfavour. “Did you not hear what I said about L-Corp's contribution reducing in accordance with other donations? How is it justice to blame me for my family’s sins? How do you call yourself a part of a fair press, after everything that L-Corp and I have done in three years? We haven’t even asked for gratitude, just neutrality and do we get that? With one honourable Pulitzer prize-winning exception, no! Well, here’s the news you seem to want."

She smiled the shark-like smile that had come to serve as a warning to experienced directors and managers everywhere in the L-Corp conglomerate and anyone with whom they did major business. 

_"I_ am not a superhero. _I_ am not a paragon of virtue. I don’t have unlimited patience or capacity for flagellation, self-inflicted or otherwise. You don’t get to milk me and L-Corp anymore for rebuilding expenses every time disaster strikes and then spit on my name the next day. So L-Corp is leaving National City effective immediately. All our operations, all our employment, all the corporate taxes that contribute to the public amenities you enjoy. Everything except the charities.”

A muttering, which rose a roar.

Lena leaned forward. The noise subsided.

“You only have one entity left to make a decision about now. Are you going to be ungrateful? Or are you going to do the decent thing by Supergirl? Don’t mess this up, National City. I’m done.”

Security hustled her away from the crowd that was rising in volume and agitation.

Within L-Corp, termination notices with legally approved severance packages were issued on everyone’s emails, and re-hiring options offered for selected employees for the new operations. Within the hour, news was spreading. L-Corp was moving most operations to India and China, with a facility in Switzerland for special innovations. It was quite clear that everything had been planned well in advance. The press that Lena Luthor had anticipated had simply given her the excuse she had needed for that second announcement.

…

Kara landed on Lena’s office balcony and tapped very lightly at the door. She would leave if she wasn't welcome. Lucy’s warning last night to leave Lena alone loomed large in her mind, but the announcement of the charity required at least the courtesy of thanks given in person. Lena must have expected that. It was an invitation of sorts. Kara just had to be very careful not to overstep.

Lena opened the balcony door without comment and returned to selecting files to stick in a redweld which Kara presumed was meant eventually to go in the half- empty cardboard box on the desk.

“Hello, Kara.” Lena’s voice was calm, not hostile but also not warm. Kara hadn’t really expected warmth but she was confused because Lena had just done something so great for her and yet was leaving permanently. Mainly she was glad that Lena was actually talking to her, had said she could forgive her eventually.

Kara concentrated on the fact Lena’s issue was not so much betrayal as violation. It made her tentative, afraid to do anything that might be thought of as a further trespass.

“Hi. I wanted to thank you for … you know … the charity.”

Lena stopped packing for a moment and looked at her.

“Kara, the moment you denied being employed by the DEO, the dangers inherent in your situation were clear to me. The time and energy taken up by Supergirl’s duties jeopardises the very day job that pays for your rent, your well-above-average food consumption, your civilian clothes. You’re paid like a regular human for one job, a relatively junior position at that, but your financial needs for the purposes of subsistence and concealment alone are far greater than a human’s and that’s at least partly because you use up a lot of energy carrying out your unpaid second job. It’s not financially sustainable in the long term. Do the arithmetic and it should be apparent in about five seconds. I don’t care if your cousin seems to be able to keep it up. Worrying about things like whether you can pay the rent is an absurd predicament for you to have to face when you risk your life so often for everyone else. It makes you less independent, and it inevitably affects the logistics and effectiveness of your performance at both jobs and the concealment of your connections to people like Alex and your foster mother. It was a stupid position for the DEO to put you in, or guilt you into or whatever it is they did to persuade you to work with them. They may give you technical support, but I provide that to every one of my employees and contractors on _top_ of wages and fees. Did the DEO even award you a food budget?”

“No,” Kara said, feeling immature and young not to have considered these matters.

“Well, there you are. I considered that you were, quite frankly, being exploited and taken for granted, not just by the DEO but the governments of the people you save. If I could, I would have made the charity an international concern. It was high time for such a gesture and I made it not so much for personal reasons as because it was simply … equitable. You can still be a journalist. Give it a couple months so the timing doesn’t raise any eyebrows and you can quit Catco and work freelance. You can even sell Catco right of first refusal and editorial rights to anything you write so you have someone independent to keep you straight on the path of journalistic integrity and quality. But you won’t be accountable for your time to anyone. You can help out at animal shelters and orphanages and hospitals. You don't have to live in luxury but you _can_ get a place to live where the exits you would use are ready to hand and not easily spotted. The point is, the charity gives you options and takes some unnecessary pressure off you. I imagine maintaining two personas is difficult enough mentally and emotionally. You don’t need more mental stress you can so easily be relieved of.”

Lena’s disinterested benevolence made Kara simultaneously so proud of her, so grateful and so full of admiration for her immediate grasp of how ridiculously unfair and needlessly risky and pressured Kara’s life had been since emerging as Supergirl. She herself had never questioned things that were now so obvious under Lena’s straightforward analysis. She had just assumed that if Clark could live like that, she could too. But he had started out in a world with fewer traffic cams and camera phones and much less in the way of social media. He worked independently of the DEO and wasn’t on permanent (and constant) call for them the way she had allowed herself to be. And just because he was able to do it didn’t mean it was _necessary_ to live like that, to take on the risks of exposure and consequent danger to the people close to him.

It also made Kara’s sorrow at Lena’s departure from National City almost unbearable.

“And now you’re leaving? Permanently?” she choked out.

Lena shrugged and resumed her packing. “It’s not fallout from what happened between us. That was a factor, certainly, but there are more important contributing factors which are unrelated. The option of doing this was regarded very favourably by what was then the Luthercorp board before the move to National City. We only decided to come here instead because we wanted to undo the bad name Lex gave us. We've given people employment and paid our city taxes, not to mention the large amounts we've written off for rebuilding and disaster relief. Well, for one thing, it doesn’t seem to have worked – or at least not enough. For another, there are lots more people in India and China that can benefit from L-Corp’s presence than there are here and I’m not likely to get spit on in the street by people looking for a convenient Luthor target to put the blame on. Third, L-Corp’s labour costs and corporate taxes will be hugely reduced and we get a plentiful supply of tech-savvy hopeful employees who will actually be glad to see us around. Kara, there are kids in India still being sold off to beggar kings to be crippled so they’ll be more pitiable when they’re thrown onto the streets to beg! All because their parents can’t make enough to survive. No one here is that badly off. For the board and the shareholders, it’s good business. For myself, it’ll certainly be more productive than banging my head against a public relations brick wall. And, oh, Catco’s been sold. But the sale is under an ‘as is’ clause. So no one’s getting fired for six months at least.”

Kara stared at her.

“I’m pulling out totally except for the charities and Catco isn’t a charity,” Lena pointed out. “As things stand, I don’t want a major media presence yet. Once L-Corp is safely re-established, maybe, but not now. We need the cash for the big move.”

Kara sat down gracelessly on the sofa. The effect of this news on her personally was offset by the establishment of the charity, of course. But she had been thinking of choosing to stay with Catco despite the option to go freelance. Now that one last remaining link to Lena was gone. Absently, still feeling as if the rug had been pulled out from under her, she took out the gift she had for Lena. Realising that this was not the time for processing, she put aside all the whirling thoughts that were liable to send her into confusion. Feeling heavy and clumsy despite her powers, she got up again and crossed to Lena’s desk. She put the watch down on it. Lena tilted her head to look.

“It’s for you. It’s a distress beacon,” Kara said. “You press the button on it and I’ll hear the signal it gives out. I … want you to know you have my help whenever you need it.”

Lena stared at it. Then she took a seat behind her desk and rested her chin tiredly in her hands. Finally she asked, “So it’s just a signal you can hear? Nothing else?”

Confused, Kara just nodded.

“It doesn’t reveal your identity? It doesn’t tell anyone including myself that Supergirl is Kara Danvers?”

Swallowing hard, Kara shook her head.

“So what’s changed that you’re giving it to me now? Why do I suddenly matter so much that I warrant this gift, when I didn’t two years ago, or two _weeks_ ago? If it’s some kind of payment for setting up the charity …” Lena’s finely shaped mouth made a sort of grimace on the word ‘ _payment’._

“It’s not! I promise you it’s not. I … you’re right. I should have given this to you a long time ago as Supergirl whether you knew my identity or not. I’m sorry, Lena. It seems I can’t do anything right.” Kara wanted to cry again.

“You do a lot of things right, Kara,” Lena said. “Every time you choose to save all of us or some of us, asking for nothing in return. I expect you’ve had your fair share of difficulties, not that I know what they are other than those you’ve had as a reporter.”

Kara flinched.

Lena went on, “I’ll never forget that you’ve saved my life many times, that even more importantly to me, you’ve saved my reputation many times as well. I don’t want to question whether you had ulterior motives. I’d like to take your actions at their highest. But even doing that, I just … can’t seem to understand how you think.” She gazed unseeingly at the watch.

“That’s probably because I often _don’t_ think,” Kara said. “I understand what you’re saying. So many of the justifications, the reasons, for what I've done make no sense now. I just used to believe they did. It’s only now when _you_ analyse them, I see that you’re right, they’re all so illogical a child could pick out the flaws in reasoning. I never thought them through before, that’s why. And I have no excuse. I was capable of it. I just didn’t do it.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because I can be an idiot,” Kara said. “Because when I first emerged as Supergirl, Alex and J’onn had so much experience and so many resources I never dreamed they had. I relied on them for advice and support so much that I never thought things through critically for myself. When you came into my life, you became so … so _precious_ to me. I just …” she shrugged helplessly, “I tried to hold on to you any way I could. At first it was any way they’d _let_ me, but later on, it was just between Kara and Supergirl and Lena and I couldn’t see my way forward except day to day, and then I just made a complete hash of it.”

Miserably she stared at Lena. “I know it doesn’t seem that way now, or at least I must seem to you confused and inconsistent. But it was always very clear to me that you mattered _so much_ to me. I just did a very bad job of making it clear to _you_. And you don’t have to believe me about that, about how much you matter. I know it must be impossible for you _not_ to question anything I say now. But maybe at some point in the future, you’ll remember me saying this and you _will_ be able to believe it. That’s why I saying it now.”

There was a short silence, then Lena shook off whatever reverie she was in. She stood up and resumed her packing.

“Where will you live?” Kara asked quietly. If she tried to speak any louder she would cry again.

“I have an apartment in Mumbai, one in Shanghai and a house in Geneva, near CERN. Security’s already in place. I expect I’ll be shuttling amongst them for a while.”

“When do you go?”

“Later this afternoon.” Lena paused. “Kara, surely you can understand I don’t want to be anywhere within the DEO’s stomping grounds. Even if they can get to me overseas, at least it will be clearly illegal. I don’t like the way they operate.”

“You don’t have to worry. Lucy – Major Lane - put her foot down about that. She was furious with all of us and she was right to be. And I told J’onn _last night_ that if he tries to do anything against you, I won’t work with the DEO anymore. I can’t leave Alex and Eliza and move far away but I _can_ do this.” It seemed a small but important point that Kara had done this before she had known about the charity.

Lena froze and looked stunned. It took a long moment for her to recover and Kara’s sorrow deepened at Lena’s surprise that she should be worth this small measure of protection.

“I … Kara, I never expected … I really appreciate that. But I object in principle to the existence and operations of the DEO. They’re not accountable. They can be infiltrated. Leadership could pass to someone who might use that power terribly. So for that reason and all the others I’ve given, despite my gratitude, I won’t change my mind about leaving.”

This Lena was a bit of a stranger yet there was something very attractive about her as she was now. She seemed … freer, unbound. She spoke matter of factly, as if she no longer cared what Kara and her friends thought and felt about what she did. And it was too real, too unwavering, to confident be anything but genuine. And while it was great to see that confidence, it was so utterly depressing that it existed because Lena felt free of the constraint of keeping Kara’s good opinion.

Kara sighed. “I don’t blame you at all. I’m just … gonna miss you so much. And I guess I hoped to have a chance to … well … rebuild something with you eventually. Whenever you were ready." She was watching very carefully for any sign that Lena was uncomfortable, prepared to step back, fly away if necessary, on an instant.

Lena shook her head. “Let’s not go there right now. It’s far too soon and bitterness is not a good look on me.”

She dropped her hands to the desktop for a second, then she came round and perched herself against the desk an arm's length away from Kara, staring at the floor just beyond her feet.

She spoke slowly. “I know you think you killed Lex but you didn’t. He got himself transported elsewhere at the last moment. I knew where he would go. I went there and waited for him and I … killed … him.”

Kara paled.

“It was with his dying breath that he revealed your identity to me. He said that at least, unlike me, he wasn’t dying a fool. I suppose that between the shock of his revelation and the shock of killing my own brother, I was susceptible. After he died, I was frozen for hours in a sort of … cramp, you could call it. I mean I _couldn’t_ move. I was so confused, and yes, hurt, and _furious_ and it was so extreme that I couldn’t even cry or puke. Eventually I passed out or fell asleep, I’m not sure which. When I finally woke, all of that was just … gone. I was numb and I have remained numb and I’m glad because I think otherwise I would have gone insane. So I was being literal when I said I wasn’t angry. I simply don’t have the capacity for strong feelings, positive or negative, for anyone or anything. Not anymore.”

Kara closed her eyes, agonized.

“I know,” Lena went on, “that something isn’t right with me. I know I need to address it. At some point, when I’m resettled, I will. But I won’t make a promise I’m not sure I can keep. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the person I was again. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel much about anything or anyone ever again. But you have to know it’s a cumulative effect. You are not responsible for the strain and sadness and guilt that was created by others previous to you. Finding out about you was simply the last straw. That, and having to kill Lex.”

So basically, Lena’s emotion centres had solar-flared. But just because Kara could make that analogy in her head didn’t make the guilt easier to bear. What was the point of apologies and amends if the harm was permanent? They would just be hollow, serving only to assuage her own guilt, the others’ own guilt, rather than be any real contribution to Lena’s wellbeing. Kara would be responsible for the partial ruin of a soul and mind among the finest that humanity had to offer. Depression, shame and despair sank like lead into her chest and gut. There _was_ no way to make this right and it had all been so _needless_.

The wrenching tragedy of it was that if Kara had just _told her_ ANY time before Lex had, if she had just been satisfied with less than optimal opportunities and opened her damned mouth, Lex would never have been able to take Lena by surprise with the revelation. Then Lena’s psyche, wounded though it might be by having had to kill him, would probably still be whole.

Kara couldn’t help the re-emergence of tears even though she had never cried so much as she had in the last twenty four hours.

“I’m not trying to guilt you, Kara,” Lena said helplessly. “I’m just explaining that meeting you halfway is not something I’m _able_ to do, no matter how much I want to. I just don’t know if I’m capable of the kind of friendship we had anymore, with _anyone_. It’s not personal.”

Kara cried harder. How could she not? The damage she had done had gone so far beyond their relationship. She had done _permanent harm._ The phrase wouldn’t go away in her head. In this miasma of guilt, she remembered that she had allowed Lena to enter into a relationship with James without telling her how he had been one of the most persistent and strongest voices against Lena in the past, or telling her that James had a mountain of insecurities that made him unsuitable for a relationship with any woman who wasn’t needy enough to forgive him virtually anything. She hadn’t been able to do so without telling Lena her identity. Instead of doing _that_ when it was already long overdue by that time, she had preferred to let her friend enter into a potentially toxic relationship without knowing everything she needed to know to make a fully informed decision. What kind of a friend did that? At the end of the day, Lena was right. What was Kara’s friendship _worth_ when she didn’t know _how_ to be a proper friend? Saving a person’s life wasn’t everything. Meaning well wasn’t everything. Despite everything good she had done for Lena, despite everything good she had wanted for Lena, she had let her down terribly as a friend in nearly every way possible.

Lena sighed quietly. “ _Please_ don’t cry, Kara. I’m going try my hardest to get better. I just … think I need to be like this for a while, to protect my sanity. I expect I’ll consult a specialist in this sort of thing when I feel I don’t need that protection anymore. But so long as I’m around you and your friends together, I won’t feel that I _can_ do without that protection. I have to leave if I have any chance of getting better. I’m sorry I was weak enough to be broken like this.”

Hearing this made Kara nearly hysterical with misery. Now that she knew that Lena was not so damaged as to be unable to have a conversation with her in person, she flung herself at Lena’s feet, hugged her around the waist and couldn’t let go. Lena’s tentative touch on her hair and shoulder made it both better and worse: better because Lena at least felt able to touch her without hostility, but worse because it was so different from the ready unquestioning affection she’d dished out before. In the beginning, it had taken a long time for Lena even to hug Kara back in a natural way, but Kara had persisted and persisted until Lena got comfortable enough to relax into it and really hug back and let herself be hugged for longer than a few seconds. Now all of that was undone and Lena was even worse off than before she’d ever met Kara.

Thankfully Lena had realised that the apology for her ‘weakness’ was what had caused the escalation of Kara’s grief. She went quiet. They stayed like that for a long time before Kara felt able to let go. If she could have, she would have held on forever. Only Lena’s unprompted assurance that she _probably_ wouldn’t turn Kara away if she visited alone allowed Kara to take her reluctant leave at last.

The last thing she said was, “Lena, if you continue working with kryptonite and Harun-El, I won’t be an ass about it the way I was before. Every time we’ve been together, I could have injured you accidentally, I could have killed you anytime I wanted. You had to trust Supergirl not to harm you even though you knew I could. _I_ have to have the good grace to trust that you won’t harm me even though you can. I’ve well and truly broken your trust because I _have_ harmed you, as badly as anyone ever has including your family even though I never meant to. But you’ve always been the better person, the stronger one. You deserve _my_ trust while I never deserved yours. I extracted promises from you I shouldn’t have and I did that by overwhelming physical intimidation with the DEO behind me. For what it’s worth, I’m voiding the promises you made to me personally even though I can’t do anything about the promises you were forced to make to the DEO. I’m sorry you ever had to make them.”

…

At home, Kara was barely able to sleep a second night in a row. The knowledge that Lena was now half a world away ate sorely at her heart. She had wanted to tell Lena how much more than merely precious she had been to Kara. She had wanted to say everything that was in her heart. But that would have been unfair to them both; unfair to Lena, who shouldn’t be asked to believe any more assertions from Kara at this time, and unfair to Kara because in her current state there was no way that Lena could be expected to give due weight to such feelings.

Lena required patience on Kara’s part now and patience she would have. She’d asked Kara not to visit for a few weeks, just to give her a break, to let her mourn the brother she had lost to madness years ago and the loss of the last opportunity for that brother to come back from his lunacy. Well, she would get that and anything else she needed – if she could bring herself to trust Kara at least enough to tell her what those things were.

In the meantime, Kara could at least get her own affairs in order. She had to sort things out with Alex and J’onn, both of whose calls she had put off today with texts to inform them that she was well but would not be available. She had trusted them far too blindly before. Their love for her, their wish to protect her, those were not in doubt. But loving them for that did not _have_ to extend to allowing them the sort of benign tyranny over her she'd allowed them to exercise before. A mother, loving her son, might give him a blanket woven with love. Her son, accepting her love, might keep the blanket yet set it temporarily aside, with care, on the nights when it was too warm, instead of strangling within its folds. That was not rejection. Strangling within the folds of Alex and Jonn’s blanket, Kara had fought too ineffectually for Lena before because she feared anything else would be to cast the blanket away altogether; it was not a mistake she would make again.

She no longer wanted the double standards that the DEO practised weighing on her conscience. Maggie Sawyer had taught her a hard lesson: that having power to do things didn’t mean you _should_ do them, that the law and proper procedure had their place as a balance against unchecked power. Well, the DEO operated too much outside the law. The liberties it had were necessary but they were presently unchecked. J’onn was a far better Director than many would be but he was not exempt from error and where he went, Alex also went and far too willingly. And so, much as she loved them, Kara was going to have to draw a line.

She now realised, just too tragically late, that beyond the undeniable physical appeal, Lena was in all ways the perfect partner for her. Kara was intelligent but so emotion-driven that she forgot to use that intellect. Those emotions gave her passion enough to achieve the most difficult victories and yet also to make the most horrible mistakes. Lena was (or she had been) a person with at least as big a heart as Kara, but logic-driven enough to work out the right solution to any problem she was faced with. Where Kara was strong enough to live through the succession of tragedies and difficulties and loss she had faced and still be essentially good and giving, Lena was strong enough to risk isolation in order to do the right thing always.

Kara had never been isolated. The Danvers had been so good to her that her environment growing up on Earth had allowed her optimism full rein. The sunny personality that attracted others to her would have been crushed in its inception by a family like the Luthors. Kara didn’t know what isolation and mistreatment would have made her, but she was certain that she would not have turned out the way Lena had.

Perhaps because of that awful childhood, Lena was self-sufficient in a way Kara was not. She could function perfectly well alone even though she was happier when not lonely. Even now, burnt out solitary shell that she was, her moral centre was intact and kindness remained.

Kara _needed_ Lena. She needed Lena’s level-headedness and pragmatism. She needed Lena’s ability to see what could be sacrificed in each chess game and what could not. She needed Lena’s knowledge of the way the world worked, the knowledge of law and finance and economics and business that every CEO required to do the job as well as Lena did. (No wonder that James had failed at it – even without Guardianing ‘duties’, he had been a _photographer –_ a very good one, perhaps, but it was hardly preparation to run even a small business, let alone one as large as Catco. It was one of Cat Grant’s very few missteps to have appointed him interim CEO at all; although perhaps it had been less of a misstep than an attempt to protect Kara at the expense of good business.) And perhaps most of all, Kara needed Lena for her grasp of what the law did not cover when it came to ethics and morality, for Lena’s ability to make the hard choices when there were no good choices to be had.

So Lena would get anything she asked Kara for at this point. And Kara would wait and hope and love her from afar and she would get her own life in order so that if Lena should ever be ready again, Kara could come to her clean and give her the decency she deserved instead of a mere facsimile of what friends offered one another. Lena deserved and needed faith and recognition more than she needed meals brought from around the globe or board games with people who were willing, without protest, to harbour secrets from her that they shouldn't. And maybe then Lena could relax and realise that her burdens could be shared, that she didn’t have to keep so many of the secrets that made her seem sinister when she was trying to do good, and that an older and wiser Kara could be trusted with them.

…


	3. New Context

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes. Seeing one story after another implicitly taking the view that Lena was not only wrong for not forgiving Kara's deception as early as possible but had to APOLOGISE for not forgiving her, my outrage built and built until it finally had to be exorcised and this story is the result. It's gratifying to see I'm not the only one to welcome this catharsis.
> 
> This chapter is mostly a bridge to set the scene for future Supercorp interactions. Apologies if readers find this chapter boring but it had to be done. Your comments and kudos have helped keep me on track so thank you.
> 
> Oh, and if anyone is remotely interested, the case that sparked Lena's hypothetical was R v Collins [1972] 2 All ER 1105.

**Chapter 3**

A couple of days later, by prior arrangement Kara flew Lucy out to a deserted part of the northeastern coast. Lucy had the forethought to bring a massive thermos of mocha.

“Okay,” she began, “you want to talk about Lena.”

“More like a way forward that won’t be hurtful or harmful,” Kara clarified.

“You know, if it were just the fact that Lena’s a victim, I could tell you to audit victim support groups and take your cue from those. Unfortunately that won’t be enough, because in this case, not only is Lena a victim, but you, Kara, were the _perp_ ,” Lucy poked at Kara’s chest with a stiff forefinger. Evidently tact was not in her toolkit for this evening. Still, that enabled her to summarise the difficulty of Kara's path succinctly.

Kara had cried out her tears of guilt and shame several times already but she had to tamp more down now. If she broke down, they wouldn’t get anywhere.

“However,” Lucy continued, “this case may have special features. First, the violation wasn’t physical.”

“Well, yes, but …” Kara went on to tell Lucy about how Lena had been had been treated in the latter days of Reign’s hold on Sam.

“SHIT!” Lucy shouted, jumping up. She slapped a boulder in her agitation, then paced a little in a further effort to relieve her feelings. “Violated so many times and _then_ bullied by you lot more than once?! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, KARA! If I didn’t know how good a person you generally are, if I didn’t believe you truly understand the absolute MOUNTAIN OF FUCKING EVIL all of you have piled on this one victim’s head, I would _never_ want to have _anything_ to do with you again! _HOW_ could you do this _anyone_ let alone someone you called a friend?”

“It was a kneejerk reaction,” Kara answered in a small voice. “arising from my paranoia about Kryptonite, and the DEO is used to backing me up. I’ve talked to J’onn and Alex about revoking the promises Lena was forced to make. It’s not even a valid promise if it’s extorted by threat of force or confinement, right?”

Lucy breathed in and out for a while. “If she feels she has to keep it because of what the DEO will do to her otherwise, it won’t matter that it’s not a valid promise, will it? If they do void it in writing though, it might be a decent first step. And you taking it up with them, that was a right thing to do.”

“I’m not making excuses, Lucy. I don’t how Lena can possibly be asked to forgive all this. It’s horrible wrong piled up on horrible wrong. There’s so much of it that my stomach physically hurts with guilt.” Kara closed her eyes and made herself small on the ground as she hugged herself tightly.

Lucy shook her head and was quiet for a while. Eventually she said ominously, “I’m going to do something about this. I don’t know what yet but that’s my business. We’re here on yours.” She resumed a cross-legged position on the ground opposite Kara. “But there had better not be anything more you haven't told me, Kara."

"I can't think of anything more," Kara confirmed, but she had lost confidence in herself and it showed in the weakness of her voice.

"Okay. Look, I don’t think forgiveness is the issue. And forgiveness is not absolution - not that I think you deserve either,” she added severely.

Kara cringed some more. Still, it felt good in a weird way to have Lucy saying things Lena should have, but with a violence of expression Lena would never have adopted. Lena was sort of a repressed personality, so even under provocation, she tended to be restrainedly intense rather than brutal with her words. She relied on the precise articulation of ideas that might be hard to hear, Lucy on the creative but appropriate application of foul language and uninhibited scolding.

“Even if she forgives you, she won’t forget,” Lucy was continuing to make her point. “Lena’s a clever woman even if she sometimes seems to have the self-preservation instincts of a lemming. She may have been less aware before because she trusted all of you personally if not the DEO as an institution. But then you all screwed her over. Can you see her ever being willing to let herself be vulnerable with you or the DEO again? The next time we need her, and I have no doubt there _will_ be a next time, her resistance could mean the difference between victory and defeat. And _that_ will be the fruit of your past conduct, all of you. That's my professional reason for wanting to do something. But in all honesty I personally feel very bad for her and I don't even know her!”

She heaved a great sigh. “Look, I've thought about this. In her place, the only way I'd even consider letting you in again more than superficially is if I _first_ got back some of the power and control in the relationship you always derived from her information deficit. Before the bullying, you protected her a lot so that’s one thing in your favour.”

“Her reputation, too,” Kara said, remembering the value Lena had put on that.

“Good point,” Lucy conceded. “I get the sense it's important to her, for the sake of L-Corp if nothing else.”

“She does a lot of people a lot of good with L-Corp. That’s why. But undeserved hostility is a burden she's had to bear for a long time. It weighs on the heart. So it matters for more than just business.”

“Mmhmm … so the fact that you did these things for her is another special feature of this case which helps you. It might mean you have a chance. Don't waste it. I don't want to be fighting an uphill battle all by myself trying to bring the DEO back into her good graces," Lucy warned.

"I'm gonna try my best," Kara promised. "And she doesn’t have anything against you. She already knows you stood up for her against J’onn. Which brings me to the second purpose of this talk. I need to make some changes in my relationship with the DEO.”

“Hmph. Is that supposed to be a good thing?” There was a wealth of caution in Lucy's tone.

“I’m still willing to help,” Kara said. “But there are things I can’t take on faith anymore, Lucy. I have to be a better person. I have to know when to put my foot down. That means learning the things I need to know in order to do it right. Can you help me with that? If it seems like I’m putting you in a conflict of interest, I'm not: the reality is that this whole thing with Lena shows, as you’ve pointed out, that if the DEO keeps doing things the wrong way, it will come back to bite us all in the future.”

“Okay. I see that.": Lucy was calmer now. "Fortunately, it seems to me that this particular disaster is an aberration and you guys do the right thing the right way most of the time. But you're asking for a lot of work. For example, would you be willing to learn some basic law of evidence and procedure? Because it’s not just the law, it’s the reasons behind the law that matter. You should be warned that most people who aren’t lawyers find it very boring.” She gave Kara an evil smirk.

“I’ll do it,” Kara said. “Can I get by on my own?”

Lucy shook her head. “Only for some of it. Discussion is beneficial. I’ll email you a reading list. You read, we discuss. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kara agreed a bit more brightly.

“That won’t be the end of it.” Lucy looked more evil. “Have you ever attended a discussion among Jews about the Talmud?”

“Umm … noooo …”

“It’s a religious text. Practising Jews will discuss and argue about a part of it every week,” Lucy grinned suddenly. “It’s one reason why so many Jews are suited to the law. They had practice in early life. Anyway, I had classmates in law school who told me about this and I got to sit in sometimes their discussions. I’m not a Jew and I don’t know the Talmud but you and I are going to have debates like that. It’ll be fun!”

“Sez you,” Kara grumped, but she made it obvious she didn’t mean it. It actually did sound interesting.

Lucy laughed. “Our first topic will be Supergirl’s own personal code of conduct. I think I know one rule: ‘Protect the innocent and the weak’. We’ll discuss who the innocent and the weak are in any given situation. We’ll discuss what protection means and how far it extends. There’s a saying that hard cases make good law. We’re gonna deal with the hard cases. We’ll question every concept in every rule you come up with until you feel certain about the reason for the rule, exceptions to the rule, reasons for those exceptions, circumstances when you can push the line and how you can push the line without crossing it. And we’re gonna discuss whether it’s ever justified to cross the line and if so, when.”

She gave Kara's widened eyes a look of friendly mocking. “We both have very busy lives. After the first couple of times, I’m expecting you to find other people to keep it up with until you get in the habit of thinking like that and start being able to make decisions by educated instinct. Having different perspectives from different people with different kinds of wisdom will help.”

Hesitantly Kara asked, “Is it … something I could do with Lena too?”

“I … think so.” Lucy pondered for a few seconds and then said wonderingly, “It’s actually a great idea! There’s enough distance in the conceptual discussion for her to be comfortable but I suppose examples from any history you share would make it a little bit personal. She can start stretching her comfort zone but it would be in a safe way because the discussions would be academic. She’s on the intellectual side, isn’t she? So she might enjoy talking like that. And if you start giving her examples from personal history you haven’t shared with her before, if you confide in her, it could create some vulnerability in you to match what she feels, and the balance of power I mentioned earlier. You’d get her talking, establish common ground, get yourself on a level with her and the discussions will build your trust in each other. It’ll take time though, and you have to watch your boundaries carefully, okay? Remember it’s already a very big deal that she’s able to talk to you.”

“Yes, I’ll remember. And I have time,” Kara said determinedly. “Or I’ll _make_ the time I need. I get that between the reading and the thinking and the discussions, we're talking about a big commitment. But I need to do this. And National City and the DEO got by just fine without me for years. They can stand Supergirl taking the odd few hours off every day.”

Kal would enjoy these discussions, she thought, and he would benefit from not being as black-and-white as he sometimes could be. Her mother in Argo City would probably be tickled pink and she had Kryptonian judicial knowledge and experience behind her. Once Kara herself got the hang of it, she’d introduce it on sister nights – ‘proportional response’ or ‘protectiveness and bullying’ could be _their_ first topic; Alex wasn’t going to get away anymore with using protection of Kara as a blanket excuse for going overboard. 

…

In the days following, it was noticeable that Supergirl concentrated on disaster prevention, amelioration and relief, on incidents the police could not handle without risking innocent casualties and on casual crime she happened to see or hear. Not unless an attack involved weapons or alien powers that significantly reduced the DEO’s advantages in weapons and tactics did she assist them. She didn't hang out at the DEO's premises.

Kara Danvers resigned from Catco with the slew of other Catco staff that voluntarily left with the influx of new management, and then she went freelance. Catco was renamed and Cat Grant washed her hands of it. Kara kept track of reporters and news editors she respected and sent her articles to their places of work for critique and eventual publication.

When L-Corp and all its subsidiaries and associated companies pulled out of National City, they also drastically reduced their presence all over the country. They left only sales outlets with their attendant warehouses, construction facilities and the corporate seat in the country’s capital. National City alone lost a quarter of a million jobs and about $20 million a year in income tax, corporate tax and expenditure by visitors on business. About one-fifth of these workers, carefully selected by L-Corp’s HR for loyalty or at least neutrality, followed L-Corp as expatriates to one overseas site or another, so National City also lost the consumer spending from them and their families.

And National City suffered. Oh boy, did it suffer. Everything went up in price as the city government strained to keep public transport, power stations and other public services running. Many entrepreneurs were lobbied to fill in the gap, but there were other gaps to fill around the country and National City was not always the first choice because of its property prices, labour costs, and the fact that here and in Metropolis, the frequent damage to expensive property and assets in the past played hell with insurance premiums. There was a struggle to absorb the unemployed that L-Corp had let go. Eventually smaller businesses moved in and large corporations set up secondary offices, but no other major player set up a seat of power in the city. From being the country’s most important powerhouse after the capital, National City fell to fourth place behind Metropolis and Gotham.

However, the city government did give public assurances to contribute to the Supergirl charity once they could keep their heads above water. People from all over the country donated to the charity once the last press conference Lena gave in National City was telecast worldwide. Even National City residents donated according to what they could afford in these straitened times. So did the national government. A few foreign governments chipped in too.

The publication whose reporter who had asked the inflammatory question at that press conference lost so much circulation so quickly that it had to file for insolvency within a month.

The President came under considerable political pressure when the country’s GDP fell significantly because of L-Corp’s departure. At her instigation, Cat Grant went to meet Lena personally in Geneva under circumstances of extreme confidentiality to discuss in full the reasons why L-Corp had taken its influential wealth-generating presence elsewhere. The President was in a receptive mood to listen to Lena’s concerns. She was deeply unimpressed by the news that the DEO’s paranoia was at least a partial cause of so many casualties to her nation during the Daxamite invasion and not at all amused by the 'guilty after proven innocent' approach adopted towards one of her country's most prominent citizens.

She established an Ombudsman’s Office for Journalistic Integrity to discipline members of the press who unreasonably harassed anyone (with strict guidelines for the definition of ‘unreasonably’) or published anything, other than editorial comment, that could be proven to have no foundation.

Major Lucy Lane was relieved of all other duties and appointed to the fulltime task of overseeing the DEO’s activities. In that capacity, she was required to pay regular visits to its various sites to ensure that lines were not crossed unnecessarily. She reported directly to the President. With a fine sense of wickedness, she drew up a two year programme approved by the President for J’onn and Alex. They couldn’t both be absent from the DEO at the same time but they were sent separately on short term secondments to various active units in the NCPD where they would learn the rules of evidence and procedure and the reasons therefor, and they would experience the effect of those rules in practice. The programme also included short internships with prosecutors _and_ defenders so they would see what failing to observe the rules meant in normal practice. Lucy reasoned that once they could better appreciate why the liberties the DEO enjoyed were not to be taken for granted, they could be relied upon to exercise those liberties with greater care and conscience since they were fundamentally decent people who meant well.

Alex began her secondments and reading with a lot of grumbling but it was mostly for show because she had truly taken to heart Kara’s concerns, missed Lena badly, and was still riven by guilt. She was pretty sure that if Maggie had still been around, she would have dumped her without hesitation for what had been done to Lena. Maggie might be gone now, but Alex still wanted to be able to stand tall if they ever met again. Sister nights became nights of a lot of talking and she learned not to get defensive as a knee jerk reaction when challenged. Both sisters became prouder and prouder of each other and instead of the friction that Kara had originally expected, their bond improved.

James Olsen was basically cold-shouldered out of Guardian duty and left National City to return to his family in Metropolis. He wasn’t much missed, which was a pity because before he started down the primrose path to assholery with his consistent opposition to Lena, then Guardian and then all the messy follow on, he had had an entire life of being a very decent man not suffering from chronic testicular self-righteousness. Superman gave him the opportunity to restart his career as a freelance photojournalist for old times' sake, but with social media and camera phones, his Superman exclusives were not the money-spinners they once were. There was so much going on everywhere that James could not rely on just the one source for stories anymore and still hope to make a living. As a result he was too fully occupied developing other sources and stories to be able to resurrect Guardian without backing, which Superman and the DEO politely declined to provide anyway. In time, he would find that, absent delusions of grandeur, he could still be an ordinary hero without needing Guardian as a penis extension, and content with that, he would become once again the immensely likeable man he should always have been.

Sam Arias knew the ins and outs of L-Corp’s big move, but on a personal basis, Lena had had to give her some reason for being so willing to leave Kara and her friends behind in National City. She explained only what had happened when the DEO discovered she had been treating Sam privately. It was a sufficient explanation so Lena didn’t have to tell her anything else. Sam and Ruby moved from Metropolis to the capital where Sam ran L-Corp's corporate secretarial seat and continued her role as CFO.

…

L-Corp had had to make financial provision for severance packages and to buy or rent countless commercial and residential properties in three countries. The capital costs of the move were vast. Lena had been truthful when she’d told Kara they’d needed the cash from the sale of Catco. They had sold existing L-Corp properties or rented them out pending sale at an acceptable price and taken large amounts of financing from various European banking houses to pay for the move.

On the other hand, the savings on taxes, labour and property rental outside of central business districts in Mumbai and Shanghai were also vast and showed their effects very quickly. Furthermore, Lena had patented the Black Body Field Generator three years ago and developed its uses. Now its practical applications in construction, research and development and defence were bringing orders months in advance of the rate at which the many types of equipment deploying it could be manufactured. Further uses for the technology were under consideration.

Any remaining resistance from the board had faded as soon the Asian option was taken and, as Lena was the goose that had laid the golden egg and was expected to lay more golden eggs, the board members were now uniformly and fully behind her.

The first month after the move, her personal priority was spent ensuring that manufacturing processes for black body field generator products, their major new income generator, were up and running smoothly. Previously existing enterprises under the L-Corp umbrella like construction, manufacturing of scientific and medical equipment and green energy production settled into their new quarters smoothly under the helm of experienced expatriates from National City and began churning out an increasingly healthy amount of gross income.

In the result L-Corp would achieve the near impossible: half a year after the big move, it would be breaking even, paying off its financing and budgeting a profit for the next financial year. Its shares would be rising steadily and potential investors would moot the idea of an Asian bond issue to expand manufacturing operations. A subcommittee appointed by the board would look into spreading into the African continent.

Away from the superfriends, the memories and a biased press, Lena's work and social environments contained no hostility or personal drama and the work itself was rewarding enough that she had no need to brood or seek refuge in drink.

The best part of her current responsibilities was creating an intra-Earth transmatter portal. The project was giving her and the small corps of scientists and engineers dedicated to it plenty of small, controlled explosions to enjoy on the way to creating a workable prototype with sufficient failsafes to satisfy even her perfectionist streak. The explosions happened because they had to find or make substitutes for materials the Daxamites had which were not available on Earth, as well as find or invent a practical power source. But the important point was that the ongoing experimentation and brainstorming was shared fun for them all and they made steady progress.

Each little explosion usually marked some kind of a failure but perversely engendered a spontaneous and exhilarated chips-and-ginger-ale party in the lab because the elimination of a possibility meant moving on to the next one. Every successive occasion this happened improved Lena's frame of mind until she was a lot better off than when she’d left National City. If her life was otherwise more ascetic than usual for adults her age who weren’t in religious orders, she didn’t mind. She was really beginning to put the bitter past behind her. And so it was that she finally felt able to start reading the backlog of emails Kara had sent, containing updates on her life and on National City. She was grateful that Kara persisted and never asked for a response.

…

When her first email update to Lena finally registered as having been read, Kara’s life began to feel hopeful again. She started spending a bit of social time with people she met volunteering or writing news stories as Kara Danvers. Game nights and even the superfriends collectively were something of a sore point now, but in addition to sister nights, she would have meals with different members of the superfriends regularly.

Partly out of guilt, partly out of consideration for Kara and partly out of responsibility, J’onn had despatched a regular run of DEO agents to India, China and Switzerland to keep track of L-Corp’s and Lena’s public activities with strict instructions not to attempt any encroachment of any kind. They also reported if Lena looked well when she appeared in public and if there should be cause for concern about her safety. Kara was heartened to hear that Lena was looking better as time went on and that she seemed to have abandoned the lemming approach and put in place personal security largely comprising vetted veterans from special forces or SWAT or the equivalent thereof from all around the world.

A month after starting to read Kara's emails, Lena began to send reserved replies to Kara’s emails. They weren’t very personal but it was progress and that meant something.

Three months after leaving National City, Lena finally told Kara by email that she might visit in Shanghai. It said something for the youngest Luthor’s resilience that tongue in cheek, she annexed a very long list of local restaurants selling every variety of dumpling and potsticker the Chinese had ever invented.

>


	4. Tentative Convergence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas holidays are over and work has begun again. I thank the commentator who noted that this is exhausting to write. All of which goes to explain slower updates. Fortunately for us all, there won't be all that many chapters.

**Chapter 4**

Kara’s brought potstickers, of course. Lena’s not-so-little list had been an acknowledgement of their past and, if Lena wanted her to have her favourite food, it was a goodwill gesture to be acknowledged.

When she touches down on Lena’s balcony, she’s nervous. Lucy’s words are sticking in her mind. They are not exactly rebuilding a friendship. First, Lena’s got to be convinced that Kara’s friendship is worth having. She’s not sure how to do that because Lena has every reason to be endlessly suspicious. Whether she shows it or not, she will be questioning everything Kara says and does and it is going to _hurt_. And Kara must live with that because she caused it.

Greetings and how-are-you’s go by with a bit of stilted formality that breaks Kara’s heart a little. Instead of waving Kara to the couch in the living room, Lena leads them to place settings on her dining table, another sign of her wanting a bit of distance.

Once they take their seats, Lena clasps her hands on the table and gazes at them for a minute. “You said before that my value to you was being someone who appreciated Kara Danvers alone, who let you just be her. What then is my value to you now?”

Kara’s heart breaks a little more. Clearly Lena hadn’t taken at all seriously any assertions about how dear she was to Kara. But she swallows the sadness down and stays silent for a minute. She’s feeling wrongfooted and has to think hard. Any slapdash, sentimental guff about the ineffable value of friendship will blow up in her face.

But as she formulates her answer, she begins to calm. Talking to Lena right now is exacting, yes. It requires thoughtfulness and rationality, not the emotional appeal that has always been Kara’s strength. Lena wants plain but precise speaking, not assertions about feelings that Kara’s past actions have given the lie to. Ironically though, the effort to comply is making Kara feel more kryptonian than human, something not even Kal could achieve. And these last few weeks doing what Lucy had advised had started her on this path already.

“You make me a better person,” is how she starts. “Sometimes you’ll say a throw away line and it gives me courage to make a decision on my career choice. Sometimes you’ll get into trouble and because it’s you, I’ll have the motivation to dig and dig until the truth is discovered and I learn a lesson about how worthwhile tenacity is. Sometimes you’ll analyse things differently from anyone else and I’ll be reminded that it’s not that difficult for me to be logical too. You inspire me by example because you’re a contemporary and a woman and you’re not afraid to stand out and take what blows may come from being a tall poppy. I’m mixing my metaphors …” she mutters.

Lena gives her the ghost of a smile, but she is watching Kara intently.

“Living as Kara Danvers was confining,” Kara admits. “It was impressed on me so strongly that she _shouldn’t_ stand out. But now as a reporter I do stand out and I’m not afraid of doing so, because of you. But I’m not just her. Everything I learn as Kara Danvers infuses who I am in the supersuit. So you influence all of me, even though you never knew it. That’s why you matter so much to me.”

“You don’t sound like Kara Danvers anymore,” Lena observes.

And it had been Kara Danvers she had liked. Kara swallows nervously. She’s made up her mind to be true to herself and to Lena, but there’s no telling how Lena will take it.

“I don’t have to hide behind her anymore with you.” Kara feels like a human treading through a minefield must. She closes her eyes for a second to concentrate. Truth. “The clumsiness originated when I was younger, when I first came to Earth and had all these new powers I couldn’t manage. The flustered stammering was from when I still wasn’t comfortable with English. I just took from those experiences so it would come across as natural. But when you act a part long enough, you become it to an extent. Acting flustered became real scattered thinking because my mind was so occupied with playing the part that I didn’t have a lot of mindspace left for the thinking I _should_ have been doing. Somewhere along the line, years before you came along, being convincing became being real. So I played Kara Danvers too well.

I convinced myself and other people, even those who knew who I was, that I really _was_ a scatty blonde, that I couldn’t think deeply or logically, that I could be overborne by the authority of institutions and or the authority of greater experience and maturity. I fooled myself because I didn’t want to appear arrogant and because I was truly worried, truly ignorant about how to navigate this world as an adult human would. Accepting the authority of the DEO over me was all Kara Danvers. Mixing up Alex’s role and the support we gave each other in my personal and my Supergirl life was all Kara Danvers.

What I _should_ have been doing was being Kara Zor-El with the DEO, accepting that I _am_ young, I _am_ immature, that I _do_ require advice, but realizing that I should not take that advice wholesale and uncritically. I’ve learned better now. Kara Danvers still exists but now I am clear that she is a construct presented to those who do not know Kara Zor-El. With Alex, with Eliza, with my other friends, I now retain some of the mannerisms of the old Kara Danvers but not the thought process. They are learning to accept me as I am. It has been … a process for us all. But now I am more truly myself than I was before. And I have you to thank for that. Without the wake-up call, without the financial autonomy the charity gives me, I would never achieved this clarity or felt able to separate myself from the DEO.”

“I’m glad for you,” Lena sounds thoughtful. “Your speech pattern has altered markedly. You really sound like a different person.”

Kara inclines her head gravely. “I am. When the occasion calls for it. Normally I am still more Kara Danvers-like, with her relaxed informality. But this is not the time for that between us, I see that. It is too important that we do not misunderstand each other. I will be satisfied with civil but distant relations with you if I must, but I wish for more.”

She pauses. “What is your current state of mind towards me?”

“Neutral but wary.” Lena is ready with her answer. “I’m glad you’re like this now.”

Kara cocks her head in a request for clarification.

“You seem more likely to think and behave consistently,” Lena says concisely. “When I reflect on the many, many things you have done for me, I see that I have derived as much benefit as damage from knowing you, perhaps more. Saving my life and saving my reputation the many times, the many ways you did were things no one else could have done, that no one else _would_ have done. Whatever your motivations, those benefits stand. Also, I would like to think that the … openness I shared with Kara Danvers was not communicated to any other … separate person.”

She pauses for an answer.

“No!” Kara nearly shouts. “No, I never told anyone else. I never will. The only things I’ve ever told the others were my impressions and thoughts of you.”

“Okay.” If Lena looks a bit dubious, Kara doesn’t call her on it. She’d said she was wary. “Well then, while that doesn’t lessen the wrong, it does mitigate the damage. So from a dry pros and cons perspective, I think I should be willing to put behind me the whole issue that’s brought us here. I’m not there yet, but I expect I will be.

After all I myself am no saint. I’ve done my fair share of selfish thinking. If you had not swayed me with your arguments against the alien detection device, it might be freely marketed today. If I had not been so thirsty for validation from Rhea, I might have considered the dangers rather than just the benefits of the transmatter portal.

This does not mean I will cease being wary of you at this time. It means I am willing to move forward with you as you are now and determine whether I have reason to cease being wary in the future. As you know, my issue with you and all your friends was that I could not fathom the way all of you thought. If you had presented as you did before, I don’t believe that issue could ever have been addressed. Now I believe it can be, with time.”

“Good!” Kara had only thought so far as wanting to be her real self for Lena; this is an unexpected bonus. “Um … so … can we eat?” As if on cue, her stomach rumbles an echo to her plea.

That earns her a small but genuine chuckle and they begin their feast.

…

Afterwards they have deepfried crepes filled with red bean paste that Kara is immediately addicted to – Lena had bought them in preparation for dinner and re-fried them quickly to get the outside crisp.

When she brings them in, Kara presents a sketchbook to her. She takes it cautiously and at Kara’s gesture, takes the seat beside her and begins looking through it.

“I made it for you,” Kara had begun it soon after the conversation with Lucy on the coast. “It’s pictures of what I remember from Krypton.”

It’s a lot more than that. On the facing page to each watercolour, there’s a short explanation in English of what’s depicted and a parallel explanation in Kryptonian on the lower half.

“I hoped,” Kara adds tentatively, “that you would be interested in hearing about Krypton. That we could go through the pictures and I could tell you about each one.”

Lena’s eyes are alight with interest as she lingers over the pages. She looks up and Kara can see that she’s touched. “Kara, this is wonderful! It must have been so much work. And each painting is lovely and contains a wealth of detail. Thank you. And yes, I’d like to hear everything you want to tell me. I’m assuming the translations are to help me with your language.”

Kara nods shyly. “It’s entirely your choice if you want to learn. I know how busy you have to be.”

Lena hums non-committally but she doesn’t stop looking at the sketchbook.

Over the crepes, Kara tells her about the first picture. It was the view from her room in her childhood home. Kara tells her about the house, the way it was laid out, why it was laid out like that, the way Kryptonians viewed the relationship of custom, efficiency and beauty in architecture and decoration. She tells her about the vehicles she’d painted in, how they worked, how old you had to be to operate one independently, what it felt like to ride one. She describes the plant just outside her windowsill, its morphology, its symbolism in Kryptonian culture.

Lena listens in absorbed silence, only interrupting for clarification now and then.

By the end, a level of comfort with each other has been established. Kara doesn’t push her luck. She takes her leave after they’ve made arrangements to meet again.

…


	5. Bones of Contention

**Chapter 5**

After that visit Lena gritted her teeth. Strength against adversity was the way she lived. She would not be defeated. The Luthors had tried. Many journalists other than Kara and Clark Kent had tried. Rhea had tried. Lex had tried several times and _almost_ succeeded the last time but he _would_ not. Lena wouldn’t allow that to be his legacy.

So the following Monday, she called President Marsdin and specified that she wanted a therapist in Europe, one with appropriate security clearances and proven results with victims of serial trauma. Discreet arrangements were made and she took a week off to stay in Zurich for the first week of face to face intensive sessions. After that she continued by video-conference. And on the advice of her therapist, she literally _forced_ herself into more social habits.

She accepted invitations to coffees and lunches and to people’s homes to share a meal and meet their families. Some of this was the inevitable sucking up by employees or contractors, but she went in the spirit that what started that way didn’t have to continue that way. Other invitations came from those she met at science fairs or conferences or through doing business with their corporations, and with these people she was less constrained, unhampered by the concern that informality might encourage insubordination and disrespect. New acquaintances became amicable and then familiar acquaintances. She went to Family Days at various L-Corp enterprises and interacted with the kids of her employees. She hosted meals in return, not at home but at restaurants or in hired rooms. By and by, her investment in people made her come down more often from the ivory tower of inventing things that would do good for the world. She began to feel the urge to experience life up close and not at a distant remove.

For Kara’s second visit a fortnight after the first, Lena cleaned off her corporate make-up and found that she wasn’t rigid with tension anymore. She took to venturing out after work and on weekends to explore her surroundings in mufti, which in this case meant jeans and T-shirts and some kind of headgear and sunglasses. The sheer physical comfort and ease of this brought back her younger days away from the Luthor household, at boarding school and college. It had its effect: she was phasing out of her corporate armour the constricting torture devices known as pencil skirts and high heels, saving those only for the most demanding of meetings.

By Kara’s third visit, Lena had reverted to casual wear once she got home. They were still in Shanghai and they went for a walk after dinner. Lena was able to point out L-Corp employees among the crowds on the streets, one with a little girl dressed in new clothes and playing in a park, three being very nicely dressed women gabbling together happily while they ate at a roadside noodle stall. She regarded them all with a sense of peaceful contentment. By the end of that night, Kara and Lena were, if not as intimate as before, then at least as relaxed together as they had been. Kara was fun, spontaneous and many other things Lena was not. Lena remembered how much she liked her, _why_ she liked her. Even if trust was still some way away, that felt like a lot of progress.

Kara’s fourth visit had coincided with the release of L-Corp’s half-year results showing that the move had been nowhere near as financially disastrous as pundits had predicted. It was still too early to tell definitively but the results were in line with L-Corp’s internal projections. They were now into the fifth month after the move and productivity was already galloping. Lena had been able to smile her wide natural smile again and even laughed, properly laughed, instead of giving the quiet huffs and chuckles that had marked her sense of humour for such a long time.

…

On Kara’s fifth visit, she told Lena about leaving Krypton, watching its destruction, being trapped in the Phantom Zone, coming to Earth and being effectively abandoned by Kal-El, discovering that the mission she’d been given by her parents, that she’d geared herself up for, was irretrievably frustrated now that Kal was an adult and only interested in things Kryptonian out of mainly intellectual curiosity. She spoke of fear and loneliness and of having a heritage when there was no one left to whom she could pass it on.

Hugging, Kara discovered, was not entirely off the table. Lena’s eyes welled up. She didn’t cry, but bursting into tears and letting herself being comforted by others was rare for her. If she could feel enough empathy for tears to come to her eyes, Kara didn’t need them to fall. Lena was _feeling._ She was feeling enough to gather Kara into her side with one arm and let Kara hide in her shoulder and weep silently. And if she was now willing to hear that they had as much in common in loss and abandonment as they did in doing good, that was a big deal.

When Kara had recovered somewhat, she went on to tell Lena about the Alura AI. She cheered up more as she described how glad she had been to find the real Alura in Argo City.

“It must have one of the most joyful experiences of both yours and your mother's lives,” Lena acknowledged with a small smile. They slouched peacefully in silence for a little while before realization made Lena bolt upright.

“What? What is it?” Kara was suitably alarmed.

Lena caught her breath. Then she shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, I just don’t want to spoil the mood right now. You’ve had a rough evening already.”

“It’s okay,” Kara said. “Kal and Alex and Eliza know the story but I’ve never told it all through from the beginning like that. Alex or Eliza knew how badly I felt, but I think they were mostly aware of the ‘losing everything’ part, not the ‘frustration of my purpose’ part. That bit was too hard to explain because I'd have had to remember all the things I was meant to teach Kal, all the things I'd lost. I didn't know how to do it. And they already felt so bad for me, it would just have made them feel pointlessly worse. But now I’ve got it off my chest, it’s not all good but I’m feeling lighter - better able to handle it, you know? So whatever you just thought of, there’s no need to put it off on account of my mood.”

“Okay …” Lena still hesitated but Kara gave her an encouraging nod. She said carefully, “Kara, what you’ve told me about the AI – let me see if I have this right. The DEO took possession of your property and held on to it for years without informing you of that fact even after you came of age?”

“Well, now you put it like that, yes,” Kara coughed in mild embarrassment at having overlooked this. She had been so happy when Alex had shown it to her that it hadn’t dawned on her that the DEO had stolen it from her. It had taken possession of property belonging to her without any intention of ever returning it. Even now the AI resided in the DEO’s premises.

“So,” Lena persisted, “through your youth and young adulthood you never knew to ask about it and therefore were effectively denied any help or comfort it might have offered you?”

Kara nodded silently.

“And then it was only revealed to you after you saved your sister’s plane from crashing and revealed your powers? What would have happened if you had followed your family’s advice and never made your powers known? If you had just disappeared after saving the plane or tied a bandana over your face? Is it possible that they would never have told you they had your mother’s AI, that to this day you might never have known it existed?”

This _was_ a big deal, Kara realized. No wonder Lena had been hesitant. It was actually … enraging. Not only was it theft pure and simple, Alex had collaborated in it. The DEO had had no _right!_ They _still_ didn’t. To compound it, _Kal_ had never suggested to her that she might have been given an AI like he had. He hadn’t even taken her to the Fortress of Solitude to show her his father’s AI during her younger days. James had done that and only after she had emerged as Supergirl. So many people had conspired to ensure that Kara hadn’t known to ask the damned question.

Lena watched her fume worriedly. 

“This is outrageous!” Kara groaned at length. “I can’t believe I never saw this before.”

“I expect you’ve always had more urgent matters on your mind,” Lena demurred. “I’m seeing this from a distance. Plus, we in the corporate mafia tend to be concerned about title and possession of property. Kara, what are you thinking of doing about this?”

“I _want_ to grab my mother’s AI and spirit it away to the Fortress of Solitude,” Kara said. “But that’s just an instinctive reaction. I know it’s not smart. It will be seen as an action against the DEO even though I’m completely entitled to take it.”

“What could they do?” Lena shrugged.

“They could outlaw me _and_ they have Kryptonite weapons.”

“WHAT the…?!” Lena looked so shocked; Kara had to remind herself that she’d been shot down by the DEO long before Lena had moved to National City: it felt to her like Lena had been around forever.

She wondered how that exclamation might have been completed. Lena, like Kara, didn’t swear aloud but Kara would bet that Lena _thought_ swear words all the time. The idea amused her sufficiently to cool her down. She explained about the shooting down and was gratified by how angry Lena looked on her behalf. "So you weren't even doing anything threatening or suspicious at the time? You were just very clearly trying to help?"

“Yup. ... Anyway, I guess I haven’t been thinking about my mom’s AI because I really haven’t consulted it much recently.”

“Why?”

“I suppose … it didn’t seem that helpful before we found Argo City and after that it seemed redundant with my real mom around.” But Kara was re-thinking that even as she spoke. It was the principle of the thing. The AI was _hers_ and it was a resource even if it wasn’t one she had used a lot. She simply hadn’t thought of it before but now she _had_. “I think … I still want unrestricted access to it, though. And if there’s any change in the DEO leadership, access might be restricted.”

“Can a complete copy of it be made with our technology? Because if so, you could make a copy, covertly if necessary, and move it somewhere you _could_ have unrestricted access to it. And you could create a self-destruct in the original to be triggered, remotely if possible, at your command.”

...

It took a while to make the copy but in the end Kara managed it and flew it up to the Fortress of Solitude. Creating the self-destruct wasn’t difficult for her. She didn’t tell Alex about any of it but she did ask her sister privately why the existence of the AI had never been disclosed to her in the first place. Alex didn’t have a good answer. Blanket confidentiality restrictions on everything to do with the DEO were imposed on all agents and she had never questioned them. She’d been so happy about letting Kara in to see the AI once she was allowed to that any wrongness involved simply never occurred to her. Once Kara made the issue clear, Alex felt terrible but it was little comfort to either of them at that point.

Alex took it up informally with J’onn, who pointed out correctly that losing such an item from the DEO’s inventory would be sure to raise questions, especially now that Kara’s alignment with the DEO was looser, regardless of the fact that no one other than Kara and Kal could make full use of the AI. This dog in the manger attitude told Kara that the government was more interested in _depriving_ her of something that could be useful to her than in keeping something that could be useful to _them_. She marked it down as yet another semi-hostile trespass on the part of the DEO.

Finally she consulted Lucy, not in her professional capacity but as a friend. She was careful, even with Lucy, to make it seem a small point and not one she was terribly interested in. Lucy agreed with her analysis but told her that J’onn’s assessment of the consequences of trying to take the AI away was politically astute. It wasn’t worth making a fuss about if it wasn’t that important, was her opinion, because letting Kara’s relationship with the DEO deteriorate unnecessarily at this time was pointless and could provoke dangerous orders from on high.

Kara didn’t let on that it _was_ important. She let it rest there but she did not forget.

…


	6. Cleaning Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Chapter 5 has been replaced with the substantive story.

**Chapter 6**

“Have you ever wondered why so many aliens here are humanoid?” Kara asked idly. She always came on a Friday night, every fortnight. Lena had visibly unbent more and more with each visit. Kara was rejoicing in their conversation becoming less structured, allowing the two of them to fall into older patterns of speaking and behaviour.

They were in Mumbai and, in keeping with the weather, both in soft loose cotton kurtas and pants out of Lena’s closet. They sprawled in the living room enjoying wafting air from fans blowing water-cooled air instead of air conditioning. Lena was being less tentative about touching Kara to gain her attention and she hadn’t seemed to mind sitting shoulder to shoulder with her to talk about the next picture in the sketchbook.

“Humanoid?” Lena quirked her brow. “They _can’t_ have been called that on Krypton!”

“I mean, bipedal, four-limbed, vertebrate or vertebrate-like ….”

“You can’t have had Linnaean classification either.” Lena was evidently in a mood for low-key mischief.

Thwarted again, Kara threw a cushion at her face. “No, we went by degrees of sentience first. So I’m using Earth terminology - deal with it, Earthling. I use it so you can relate!”

Lena moved the cushion off her face and chuckled. “Fine. Yes, I _have_ wondered. The probabilities always seemed vastly against it.”

“Kryptonians had a theory that far back beyond the known histories of any peoples we knew, an ancient race seeded the universe with the foundations of sentient life in a form that would usually evolve as humanoid. We could never prove it but it was considered a rational explanation. Daxamites were an offshoot from Krypton: we shared common ancestors way, way back and some went off in crude space vessels before we even had FTL capacity and landed on what became Daxam. But not counting them, we knew a sufficient number of humanoid species to make the theory plausible. Then there were species that were totally _not_ humanoid, which the theory said evolved without connection to the ancient race.”

“ _How_ not humanoid?” The eyebrow went up again.

“Well, for example, there was a species each individual of which looked like a sac of sand with a kind of volcanic spout on top and a secondary escape valve on the …. shoulder, I guess you’d call it. They had a membrane to receive sound and derived nourishment from organic and inorganic chemical reactions within their bodies. You’d give a day greeting in Common Tongue and they would gurgle a bit and emit a stream of yellow smoke from the top spout, then gurgle some more and emit a puff of purple-gray smoke and then whistle once through the secondary spout. That was a return greeting in Common Variation 3b. They had their own language when talking amongst themselves. Vibrations through the ground. They weren’t really mobile. And we knew methane- based and sulphur-based sentient beings too.” Kara’s voice was dreamy.

“We have sulphur and ammonia oxidizing sponges in our deep oceans,” Lena murmured.

They lapsed into a comfortable digestive silence under water-cooled air wafted at them by fans. Lena had had a vegetarian selection brought in for herself, while Kara had had goat, chicken and fish curries with a vat of rice that Lena had steamed. Somewhere in kitchen, Kara knew, there was kulfi and gulab jamun, but even she required _un petit pause_. It was too hot and humid to venture out, even at night, so neither even considered the possibility.

A beeping noise came from Lena’s phone and she reached for it.

Frowning, she said, “It’s the DEO. Kara, I think we should take this together.”

In the study, Lena established a video link.

Kara had told Alex that she and Lena were talking again, that she visited Lena. She’d just never told Alex exactly when these visits were. So she wasn’t surprised that Alex’s eyes widened on seeing her there beside Lena.

Perfunctory greetings were exchanged. Everyone was polite.

J’onn opened with, “Lena, we have a training room here with kryptonite emitters. It was made this way to allow Alex and other human agents to train Supergirl in fighting techniques that would enhance her ability in a fight. We didn’t want her to be helpless if she lost her powers for any reason. I … we … did not realize until last year that kryptonite at the levels required for the training to be effective doesn’t simply dampen her powers, it makes her feel sick. Any higher and it causes her pain.”

Alex interjected, “Since then, we’ve been trying to replace it with a red sun emitter but we’re not having any success. We’d like you to come here and see if you can help.”

“No.”

Lena didn’t hesitate with her answer. Kara heard her heartrate spike the moment Alex had said ‘come here’ but her face and voice somehow remained calm. After a couple of seconds, her heartrate resumed its normal pattern.

“Look, Lena …” Alex’s eyes leaned forward, eyes narrowed.

“She said no!” Kara interrupted. Lena had told her that she had begun therapy and so far appeared to be well able to take care of herself but Alex and J’onn were involving Kara in this and that was _not_ all right. Hearing that sudden aberration in heartrate, Kara feared a setback in Lena’s recovery. “You have no right to demand her help, still less to put pressure on her. You ask and you tell her the reasons you need her there and then you let her decide like the intelligent adult she is. You don’t try emotional blackmail and you _certainly_ don’t get to use me for that purpose!”

“Let’s … take a second here,” Lena’s voice was level as ever. “Can you explain what the problem is?”

“We’ve been trying to adapt the red sun grenade we used against Reign into a stable emitter. We think it didn’t have any effect on Reign because she was modified until she was biologically different from Supergirl and Superman, but it should work on _them_. Anyway we wanted to be able to use that kind of radiation, but from a steady, controllable source that doesn’t explode. It would help with medical treatment for them too. Kryptonite would just make things worse for them before we can make them better. In critical incidents that could make all the difference.”

Lena leaned back a little. “What’s the spectrum of radiation you’re using?”

Alex emailed it and Lena pulled it up on a second monitor. “Why this range? Where’d you get it from?”

“The nearest red sun visible from Earth,” Alex said.

Lena shook her head. “You’re assuming that radiation from one red sun is the same as radiation from another red sun. That’s a big assumption, isn’t it? And are you certain it is the radiation alone that’s needed? It might have been the specific portion of the spectrum of radiation from Krypton’s sun acting in conjunction with the atmosphere and/or ground elements of the planet that left Kryptonians without the powers they have here. It may be our sun’s radiation alone that gives them powers here; it doesn’t irrefutably follow that it was Rao’s radiation alone that left them without powers there.” She turned to Kara. “Can you add anything to this?”

“No,” Kara shook her head. “All Kal and I were ever told was that we were being sent to Earth because the sun here would make us powerful and virtually invulnerable. It wasn’t a matter of Krypton’s red sun _depriving_ us of powers. It was a matter of _this_ yellow sun giving us powers we normally wouldn’t have. Our parents must have thought it would be enough protection for us. There wasn’t detailed research on this in the archives we were given. I mean, we weren’t _in_ a yellow sun system so it would have been difficult for studies to be conducted. it would have required travel and Kryptonians willing to be test subjects. If they'd discovered this long enough before Krypton went critical, they'd have sent a bunch of people to this system, not just Kal and me. They'd have made up some excuse, like scientific studies or a test colony if they didn't want to go public about the fate of Krypton. Or they would have gone public and got everyone to this system. I think an explorer found this system and returned to tell them only just before Krypton exploded. I mean, Kryptonians explored but they never had powers anywhere else on record. Slaver’s Moon, for example, had a different red sun and I didn’t have powers there.”

Lena opened her hands. “There are an immense number of permutations and combinations of radiation spectra, atmospheric gases, trace elements, ground radiation or other effects that might be relevant. It could take you years to try them all in order to obtain the exact combination of factors present on Krypton. And that’s provided you can reproduce the part of that radiation spectrum that came from substances not available on Earth. It’s actually quite an achievement to have accomplished even this in a compact form like the grenade.” She tapped the second monitor.

Despite the accolade, Alex looked depressed. It would have been a lot of work, Kara thought. She was full of gratitude but that didn’t change the fact that she’d flagged a matter to discuss with Alex in private.

“Look,” Lena suggested, “wouldn’t it be simpler to try and neutralize the effects of kryptonite? It was found in its natural form on Krypton, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kara replies. “And of course we didn’t call it that, but I arrived far too late to have any influence on what it was called on Earth.”

“So … off the top of my head,” Lena says, “could it be that the right red sun radiation will neutralize the effect of kryptonite on Kryptonians here on Earth? I mean, do you remember Kryptonians on Krypton ever suffering the effects of what we call kryptonite?”

Thoughtfully, Kara shook her head. “You may have something there, you know? We had illnesses and diseases but none of them was associated with kryptonite. If it were otherwise, we would have left Krypton or developed some sort of effective shield, immunity or neutralization. It only became a big deal to me when I got here. It was so … well … _unimportant_ on Krypton that it took my Aunt Astra by surprise when she was here. And she was military so if it had been a known threat to Kryptonians, she or my dad would have known everything there was to know about it.”

“Do your archives have any research by Kryptonian geologists or mineralogists on it? It might be perfectly innocuous seeming research. After all you called it something else, possibly as innocent sounding as silica or granite would be here. Superman wouldn’t have known to look for it under that name so Lex wouldn’t have looked for it under the right name either.” That was Lena again.

“Give us the name and we’ll trawl through what we have here,” Alex offered. “Would you like to check at the Fortress of Solitude? And maybe the next time someone goes to Argo City we can ask for anything they have.”

Kara nodded and said something that sounded like gibberish. Then she chuckled. “Give me a while to think about a proper transcription into English.”

“Okay. Well, the DEO has now reproduced this spectrum of radiation.” Lena tapped the second screen again. “Why not see how it works with kryptonite? It won’t cost any more than the time needed to test variations of the two together. Maybe it won’t work with this particular red sun or because something else is missing. Maybe it _will_ work. The Slaver’s Moon example could mean that the portion of radiation red suns have in common might work so the spectrum you’ve made might be more helpful than I first thought. At any rate, with only two variables, you’ll reach positive or negative proof of concept faster than making countless stabs in the dark. I’ll lend some thought to the problem myself and email you my suggestions. Is there anything else?”

J’onn shook his head.

“I’m glad you decided to consult with me on this,” Lena said.

They all smiled tentatively at each other. No one brought up the sensitive subject of her going to the DEO again before the video call ended.

…

Back in the living room, Kara said, “I’m sorry they even tried that. They had no right!” She huffed.

“Not your fault,” Lena shook her head. “And they _barely_ started to try before you stepped in. I guess I still have some way to go, though. Thank you for your support.”

“I don’t want them setting you back. And it doesn’t count as support when it was the right thing to do.”

“I won’t let them set me back,” Lena assured her, and then promptly got distracted. “It sounds like it would be a good thing for you if we could find a way for you lose your invulnerability and powers in a controllable way and without pain or sickness.”

“Yeah, it really would …” Kara lost herself in thought about everything it would mean.

In the background there was, vaguely, Lena muttering, “I don’t want to jump the gun but if we’re right, the tactical advantage of being able to neutralize the effect of kryptonite with the right sort of red sun radiation … well, you might be without your powers but you wouldn’t feel sick and in pain and maybe Alex could train you more – because if that sort of situation arose you could focus on destroying the kryptonite first … and if you had a team with you … I don’t see why you shouldn’t carry a projectile weapon: it would certainly help on occasions like that to destroy the kryptonite …”

She glided over to the large French-style window now, looking down on the lights of this great sprawling city, as she wittered on about tactical and medical advantages and Kara was … not paying attention.

Lena’s corporate garb meant something the way that lawyers’ robes in court and priests’ robes in church do. It was a visual of the context in which people are met, the way they were expected to think; a solemn reminder of the urge to tell the truth or to think spiritually or to behave professionally. But in this moment in casual clothes, Lena’s edges were gone and she was just a woman in her late twenties like Kara, taking joy in the prospects that might suddenly be available for someone else. There could be no greater proof of her essential kindness and generosity than this small private moment and Kara felt a wave of … something very positive flowing through her.

She came back to herself when Lena turned back. “Do you need to go? To the Fortress, I mean.”

Kara nodded. “I should.” It wasn’t desperately urgent but she wanted to talk to Alex privately anyway.

“Okay,” Lena said. “Just give me a head’s up when you next want to visit.”

And there it was. They were off the two week schedule.

…

An elated Kara traveled via the east coast of the US, where she picked up a veritable cartload of pizza and potstickers to carry to the Fortress. It took her a full day, with intervals for sleep and food, to get what she needed downloaded in usable format. Then she flew to Alex’s apartment after getting text confirmation that her sister would be there. It was Sunday evening. By this time the elation had subsided and she was serious again.

“Hey.” Alex was lounging rather decoratively on her couch. She waved at her sister.

“Alex,” Kara blurted, “you have _got_ to stop being jealous of Lena!”

Alex sat up, looking absolutely shocked. “What? Kara, what are you talking about?”

Kara embarked on her half-prepared rant. “I get that you’re protective of me and I love that about you. But there’s something more behind your kneejerk reaction to intimidate her whenever she does or says something that you don’t immediately interpret as being wholly in our favour. It’s disproportionate and you always cite the same tired justification. And I think it’s because you _are_ jealous. I went through this with Maggie when you missed my Earth Birthday to be with her. I was a brat. But this is the same thing. I stopped being a brat because I wanted you to have Maggie guiltlessly. I did that for you partly out of my own guilt and gratitude, but fundamentally there was justice to it: you have a right to your own life. You have to stop as well because I have a right to mine. Trying to come between me and the people I consider important just because they aren’t part of the DEO-in-the-know club is NOT the way to go. Maggie shouldn’t even have been in that club before, you know? I didn’t say anything even though Lena was already closer to me than Maggie was and that was wrong of me. But it was always _my_ secret, so how unfair was it that _you_ got to share it with Maggie and _I_ didn’t get to share it with Lena?

I mean, I get it, okay? You’ve put so much of your life into me, into protecting me, helping me, watching my back. And from your perspective, maybe it seems like Lena just swanned in doing a lot less, a fraction of what you’ve done for me, and suddenly she’s so important to me. It doesn’t seem fair. But first of all, we’re Alex and Kara and _nothing_ will ever change that. And secondly, you don’t know half of what Lena’s done for me. I don’t tell you those things just like I never expected you to tell me every private matter between Maggie and you. They’re _private_. But you can’t assume they don’t exist. Do you even know I owe my career to inspiration from her, for example? This personal jealousy has NO place in your professional life.”

She finally flopped down into a chair.

Alex had looked like she’d swallowed a lemon at first, but she had also started out being less defensive than she might have been just a few months ago. By the time Kara was halfway through, she was more thoughtful and serious. She nodded. “Okay, Kara.”

Kara wasn’t satisfied.

“Alex, behaviour is so often rooted in our inner lives. It’s no good my telling you to make nice or apologize for this, that or the other if you’re just gonna do it again, convinced that you’re thinking the right way. You need to address what’s _causing_ the behaviour. Lena’s no fool. Placatory gestures and words won’t cut it with her. They’ll just ratchet up her resistance. I mean, she hasn’t seen the work _you’re_ doing to be better. And Alex, if after doing so well at it you can still revert to this now all of a sudden, you _know_ it’s an issue for you. Stop calling it disloyalty in your head whenever she does something that she has every legal right to do just because you want her to do something else. Own the issue. You can’t defeat it otherwise. God, you are _soooo_ clever and loyal, _sooo_ good to people you love! This blind spot with Lena, it’s not you and it’s not becoming of you.”

Alex clenched and relaxed her fist, which she did sometimes when lost in thought. “I guess … I never even realized that I had an issue like that because I was so busy at first worrying about Lena’s connection to her family and I just kept on attributing my attitude to that. I’ll work on it … but you have to help by gushing about her now and then, okay? Whatever you feel comfortable telling me. That’s gives me more to work with. You kept her to yourself for the longest time, you know. Which wasn’t wrong _at all!_ But it did mean I didn’t have a lot of material to work with in appreciating her. And OK, it was maybe chiefly my fault for not being in a space where you might have felt comfortable bringing her to meet me or telling me more, but you could’ve tried. I really never understood quite _how_ important she was to you. Now that you’ve compared her to Maggie …”

Kara went pink. “I didn’t mean …” She sighed, debating telling Alex more. But then there wasn’t much to tell as yet. “I just meant Lena and I were close, not the same way you and Maggie were, of course, but still close enough that it wasn’t right that Maggie knew and she didn’t. And now you’re getting close to Kelly and she is James’s sister and … well, I don’t mind if _she_ knows, but you see the pattern? Everyone who’s under the DEO’s thumb formally or informally – it seems OK with you that _they_ know regardless of whether they’re close to _me_. Lena’s the exception. You and J’onn can’t control her. And after you got over the Luthor name, it’s _that_ fact, that you can’t control her and the fact that to you she threatens our closeness, that gets to you. Most of the time with people who aren’t under your control you get to use force or intimidation under the subterfuge of the FBI name. You can’t do that with Lena now. So you actually have no kind of control whatsoever and you turn that helplessness into suspicion about what she could do the moment she doesn’t toe the line like a good DEO lackey. Also, you’re right. My friendship with Lena was kind of my very own thing, and I did clutch it to myself maybe more tightly than was good for me. But we absolutely need to deal with this properly now. You can’t just go around telling or confirming _my_ identity to people because it’s important to _you_ to do so, and then turn around and try to forbid _me_ from doing the same!”

“I understand, Kara, I really do,” Alex said earnestly. “And I accept all that. I’m just saying that if I had understood the … the _depth_ of your feelings for Lena, maybe I would’ve been more accepting earlier. People use the word ‘friend’ so loosely and differently. I never quite grasped how invested you two were in each other for a long time. But I do now.”

“It’s not just her,” Kara insisted. “It’s the principle of the thing. I _will_ consult with you but you _have_ to accept that you can’t forbid me from revealing myself when it’s important for me to do so and then lose it when you can’t stop me from doing it. You don’t own me. The DEO doesn’t own me. And don’t you realise that if the DEO gets subverted … don’t make that face, you know something as legal as a change in administration could have that result … you won’t be able to protect me forever? If that happens, it’s exactly the people I can trust _outside_ the DEO that I’ll need, and the more of them I have, the more powerful they are, the safer I will be. Cat Grant and Lena Luthor are not people to be wary of; they are people to be grateful for. You never had a problem with Cat Grant even though she made my human life difficult and threatened to out me. So it wasn't just about surnames. Miss Grant never threatened the relationship between you and me in your eyes. Lena did.”

Alex rubbed her face wearily. “Shit. Doomsday scenarios for Sunday dinner; just what I needed. Look, I take your point. If I let protecting you continue to be a trigger point for going over-the-top, I’m going to end up endangering you or piling responsibility and guilt on you for the consequences instead. I’ll talk to J’onn and if that doesn’t help enough, I’ll ask Kelly to help me or recommend a fellow professional in her field who can. The horrible thing is, I actually really like Lena and I’ve shown her that … so I think I must probably come across as slightly insane to her now.”

Kara just looked at her.

“And she’s not the only one to think that,” Alex concluded ruefully.

Kara nodded without smiling. “I used to find it comforting and possibly in the beginning I needed it. But we all grow up. It’s frightening now, Alex. I don’t want to have to keep worrying about what you’ll do if you even think I’m compromised in some way. You have to grow up too.”

“Can we be done with this now?” Alex looked exhausted. “I’ve promised and I’ve not broken a promise to you yet.”

“We won’t be done with this until I’m sure you’re making progress with it,” Kara said primly. “But yeah, for tonight, we can eat and Netflix and be couch potatoes together now.”

Finally she relaxed. Her stomach growled. They smiled at each other.

Kara would eventually be grateful for this minor hiccup because the way she had stood up for Lena during the video call would prove to be the last push Lena needed to accept Kara fully back again.

…


	7. The Long Dark Night of the Soul; Steps Forward, Steps Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two chapters under this AO3 one so the later chapter numbers won't coincide with the AO3 ones. Apologies if that's confusing but I don't know what to do about it. Hopefully it won't really matter to readers.

**Chapter 7**

For months after Lex’s death, the effects of learning Kara’s identity wavered in Lena’s mind. Sometimes it was like she’d been the emperor who had been so happy in his new clothes when everyone else could see he wasn’t wearing anything. It was a very peeled open feeling, inciting in her instinctual desires for shell and claws and stingers.

Then there was frustration that she hadn’t troubled to discover it for herself. She’d turned herself away from even thinking about Supergirl’s civilian identity because she had believed it would be dangerous for everyone concerned. Besides she felt that Supergirl had a right to a secret civilian identity. And of course in her mind Kara Danvers had been just human. After the initial period of guardedness, it had never occurred to her that Kara Danvers had a duplicitous bone in her neat, trim body. There were periods when she saw more of one identity and almost nothing of the other. Comparing the two would have yielded their similarities fairly quickly: it had simply never occurred her that she should do that.

At other times, she would see the whole secret keeping as being the habit of half a lifetime and really, if she hadn’t had so _much_ to do with _both_ identities, she wouldn’t have felt quite so hard done by. And it had all been _unnecessary._ That was the incomprehensible thing. It seemed like so _much_ pointless trouble that Kara had put herself through time and time again to keep it from Lena. That was what bothered her so much because then it wasn’t just reflexive, was it? It had been a _lot_ of deliberate effort. And subsequently a group deliberate effort.

Lena doubted that she would ever be able to think of it other then negatively because she simply _could not_ understand it.

Several times, she tried very hard to put herself in Kara’s place. She could accept the instinctive need for secrecy. She had her own measure of that. She tried to imagine that Kara said was true, that she hadn’t wanted to lose Lena because of how important Lena was to her. 

All it made her feel was like the platonic equivalent of a human sex toy. Someone you called on for a specific purpose without revealing important parts of yourself to her. In Kara’s case, she called on Lena not for sex but for the comfort of someone who cared, who would provide advice and support and material help, so that Kara could to relax and take her genuine ease with Lena’s own ignorant ease. Of _course_ she could be ‘just Kara’ with her because Lena only _knew_ ‘just Kara’. She hadn’t been given the _chance_ to prove what kind of a friend she might have been to Kara Zor-El. So what was the original plan? To keep Lena in the dark the rest of her life so as to preserve that refuge? When Kara herself must have known her own heart couldn’t keep it up forever, as evidenced by her unprompted revelation the night of the Pulitzer ceremony? What kind of a plan was that?

How many times had Kara come to Lena only because none of the superfriends was available? Come to share the crumbs left over from the main table after everyone else had eaten their fill and wandered away? Because Kara lived for love and attention. It wasn’t enough that she had the Danvers and the whole group of superfriends putting her first so much of the time. They had their own lives and so, when they were not putting her first, she came to Lena. Who hadn’t realized that - until now.

And of _course_ Lena remained grateful for the unstinting support and comfort Kara had provided. Even those leftover scraps of Kara’s attention had been enough for her to have gone out of her way for Lena, put her own life in danger for Lena, saved Lena’s and L-Corp’s reputations more than once. The benefits of the deception had gone both ways.

That didn’t stop her from feeling used.

Being on Lena’s side, obtaining Lena’s help, had given Kara the biggest boosts she’d had in her reporter’s career. That balanced out against the many times Kara had saved her. Lena was okay with putting all that to one side. It was the intangibles, the sense of moral support and comfort and fucking _friendship_ that gave rise to resentment when Lena thought of them as table scraps.

 _Important_ to Kara? Sure, because Kara needed someone who would sop up the leavings of others, give her attention when no one else could, while letting Lena believe she was getting the first cut of the roast. The very thought made Lena want to growl and snarl and snap. One can settle for table scraps if one _knows_ they are table scraps. Lena had done that with Lillian, expecting nothing more, then promptly gone out and made a life for herself, with Jack, then with L-Corp. In Kara’s case it was _not knowing_ that what she was fed was just table scraps that really got under her skin.

Lena had never been keen on the idea of ‘vendetta’. Too many people had unfairly sought to revenge Lex’s wrongs on her for her to feel like it was a good thing. The Luthor in her understood it because it was _useful_ to understand it, so she’d know what to look for in other people’s body language, know to prepare pre-emptive defensive measures. It had never been about revenge for herself. But after Lex died, after she had killed him for the benefit of everyone else but chiefly for the benefit of one person, a group of people, who had been lying to her for god knows _what_ reason, for the first time ever, she developed a real, true understanding about why victims feel the need for revenge.

On the surface it’s payback. But more than anything else, it’s about power. Taking some back after being victimized, evening the scales.

But inflicting damage on others for any reason except self-defence was not her. (Going to shoot Edge had not been revenge, it had been pre-emptive self defence, to prevent him from attacking her further and destroying all the good things L-Corp was doing for the world.) And Lex would _not_ turn her into something she was not.

There were other ways to take power back, to even the scales, that would bring more lasting satisfaction. To start with, she removed herself from ground where she was vulnerable: the circle of superfriends, National City.

But what was she to do about Kara?

Before Kara, there had been Andrea Rojas. She had loved Andrea and Andrea had thwarted her in her quest to stop Lex with that damnable medallion. Like Kara, Andrea had acknowledged that she had done wrong by Lena. Like Kara, Andrea was probably very, very sorry. Where did that leave Lena? With her heart riven and shoulders burdened with responsibility for Lex’s many victims, with her life risked _how_ many times because Kara had kept her secret beyond any reason for it? Who was to say what _else_ Kara would risk Lena’s life for?

For the sake of whatever _was_ real between them, Supergirl would still come and save her life at a moment’s notice. Kara’s the sentimental sort and an attention hound and Lena’s powerful and extremely rich and _useful_ and quite capable of giving her attention.

As much she’s useful to Kara, Kara is useful to her. Being able to call on Supergirl for help is no bad thing. So if Kara didn’t want to be ghosted, Lena wouldn’t ghost her.

So fine. It was to both parties’ benefit to stay in touch. Lena would let therapy do its work, review things now and then. She could be generous, hospitable, supportive and kind to others and to Kara. But she wouldn’t depend on Kara for anything or put faith in her judgment ever again.

...

This conclusion lasted until Kara’s first visit, when Lena was given reason to hope that Kara’s judgment was in fact improving if the clarity of her speech and thought process were anything to go by. Her assessment was reinforced with each succeeding visit or phone call when Kara, despite reverting to her normal manner, continued to display the same ability to think things through. It seemed, in fact, to be becoming instinct. That was a great relief.

And when Kara had unequivocally and voluntarily shut down the DEO’s attempt to persuade Lena to go to their premises, before Lena’s own incipient panic had even begun to take hold, before she had even thought that she might need support, it was proof that Kara could anticipate Lena’s more intangible needs. 

When a white crow comes along to challenge the hypothesis that all crows are black, a good scientist adapts, re-works his or her provisional conclusion into something that is consistent with the newly available data. Lena’s new hypothesis was that she might place qualified reliance on Kara for _some_ things. The tiny wounded thing inside her began uncurling just a little bit. Lena wondered if it would ever uncurl completely. That is just the nature of trauma. Because no matter whether you forgive it, you still don’t forget.

…

**Chapter 8**

“Ah, Supergirl,” Lena said, looking up from the lab bench. “This is Dr Aine Morrison. She’s a materials physicist with L-Corp and has been working with me.”

Kara shook hands with the slightly incredulous slender ash blonde with the pixie cut standing next to Lena, and they greeted each other.

“I hardly believed it when Lena told me. I’m so very pleased,” Aine said. “Welcome to Geneva and please just call me Aine. And you needn’t worry. I’ve signed all the paperwork that obliges me to stay quiet about this but I would have been a vault anyway. Absolutely no one but Lena will know from me that I’ve been working on this. I’m very keen that you remain uncompromised. I have friends in National City.” Her Irish accent was very noticeable.

Kara noticed that Lena’s voice from earlier had taken on the faintest similar lilt and wondered how long they had been working together. Lena’s middle name, she remembered from the interrogation at the DEO, was Irish. But she’d been only four when she went to the Luthors. If her accent ever slipped, it went slightly more Southern Standard English than Irish, probably from boarding school. But perhaps exposure to a strong Irish accent over time brought unconscious speech memory back. “I’m pleased to meet you too.”

She was very curious. Lena had been very busy in Geneva. Kara had taken to flying by her house and texting from nearby to ask if she was free. The house had been dark in the early evenings and the answer to her texts had been invariably no for weeks, except for the Friday nights and even they had started later than usual. One time, when Kara waited for her, Lena got home just after midnight, obviously tired. They had been able to do nothing more than share a hot chocolate before Lena was ready to drop.

So despite Lena’s permission for ad hoc visits, none had actually occurred, not a _substantial_ visit. Was she about to find out what Lena had been so busy with?

“I asked you to come because we have been working on something that could be useful to you,” Lena said with a hint of anticipation. “Previous conversations brought it to my mind and I couldn’t let it go because of the many potential uses for it in the world as well for you. To begin with, I hypothesized that the visible spectrum of solar radiation isn’t what gives you your powers.”

Aine nodded. “If it _were_ the visible spectrum, then just putting coloured filters on the windows or using coloured bulbs would affect you.”

“Oh no,” Kara agreed. “I’ve been in dark clubs with different coloured lights and out at night and not been affected.”

“Right,” Lena said. “And since a lot of solar radiation passes through most matter and vacuum, the invisible spectrum of the sun’s radiation is still in the atmosphere at night. That reinforced my hypothesis. So what we’ve designed is as complete a filter for solar radiation as we could make. Would you like to try it?”

“Sure!” Kara was excited.

“Okay, look.” Lena led her to another door in the lab. “This is a room with lead shields over the windows. The windows and walls are completely lined with the filter we designed and made. Because the shields are down, it’s going to be dark. Pitch black. We’d like you to go in for a short while and then report to us if you feel any effects of the solar radiation being totally blocked. You shouldn’t feel anything drastic because you have energy stored up in your body but you should feel that you aren’t being _energized._ If you do feel that, then we’ll raise the shields and let light in, but the filters on the windows will still be there. So then you go in again and we’ll see.”

Kara nodded. She had to bear up under the impending claustrophobia but it would only last for a few seconds and it was for _her_ benefit.

It turned out that Lena was right. Kara could feel the continuous replenishment of her energy stop as soon as she entered the room. Once light was let in, the claustrophobia disappeared but the lack of energizing didn’t change.

“Great!” Aine rubbed her hands with a sense of accomplishment. “Now, we need to know how long you’d need in there before ordinary medical needles would be able to penetrate your skin. Are you up to staying in there? We have books in hard copy available so you can occupy yourself.”

Lena looked concerned. “Is that all right with you? I hate making you feel like a lab rat but I don’t know how else we can do this.”

“No, I’m great!” Kara said.

“I’m afraid you can’t eat anything while you’re in there,” Lena was apologetic.

“Okay, maybe not so great.”

Aine immediately looked worried, while Lena rolled her eyes.

“Kidding! I’ll be fine.”

Relieved, Aine went on. “Right, no heavy exercise, please. We need to time it as if you were unconscious or at least not able to move with your usual vitality.”

“Mmm … if you were injured your body would be using up energy at more than your at rest rate to repair the injury,” Lena nodded, “but we need baseline figures to start with.”

It took an hour with Kara sitting still and reading.

After that, she flew around the room and furiously did some air punches and press ups and crunches and lunges. It took only a quarter of an hour before Lena was able to insert a needle into her arm.

“I think we’re done,” she smiled at Kara.

…

Flush with success, Lena called it an early day and Aine cheerfully left. Well, no doubt it counted as an early day for _them._ As it was, by the time Lena started tooling her car homeward with Kara beside her, it was past six.

“Do you want me to inform the DEO?” she asked quietly in the car. “If they already have kryptonite, you might not be too keen on providing them with another way to weaken you. On the other hand, they haven’t yet succeeded in finding the right red sun radiation to neutralize kryptonite, have they?”

“No,” Kara shook her head. “But they’ve got the red sun emitter going. Alex said they emailed you their schematics and you tweaked them?”

“I did.”

“Well …” Kara gestured at Lena’s front porch, to which they’d just driven up. There was a large package on the front mat. “I dropped that off here before coming to the lab. It’s a red sun lamp.”

Lena frowned at her. “You just left it here out in the open? A bit dangerous, don’t you think? Someone might have stolen it. Or sabotaged it. You could have brought it with you to the lab.”

“I didn’t want anyone else to see it. And Alex booby trapped it. She texted you about that.” Kara lifted the bulky package. "And I wanted to be around when you saw it, just to be sure _you_ didn't succumb to the booby trap."

“Oh. I forgot to turn my phone back on.” Lena bit her lip as she remedied that oversight immediately and then opened her garage door. “Why am I being given it anyway?”

“Alex knows I visit,” Kara shrugged. “She figured it couldn’t hurt if you had one, in case for some reason I got hurt while I was nearer you than the DEO. Better to have and not need than to need and not have. Plus the final design only succeeded because of your input. She’s not giving you anything you couldn’t build yourself. Saves you the trouble.”

“I wasn’t going to build one,” Lena said, watching Kara carefully dismantle the booby trap in her mud room. “Unlike the filters, it really doesn’t have many uses for anyone else. We’re going to use the filter technology to improve sunscreen lotions, prevent cancer, market them to X-ray facilities everywhere. Some labs will need them too. I’m pretty sure CERN will be one of our first customers. It will help a lot of scientists who are running experiments from which ambient radiation should be excluded …”

And like that, she was off, talking through the implications of these filters having been successfully made. Kara watched her fondly as they worked to put the lamp together.

When they stood looking at the finished product, Kara said, “I agree with you. Don’t tell the DEO about the filters. I’ll tell Alex privately though, if that’s okay with you.”

Lena nodded. Kara carried the red sun lamp to the guest room Lena indicated.

“Are the filters difficult to make?”

“Yes, actually.” Lena dug out a couple of loaves of bread, cheese and butter and a pitcher of orange juice and set them out for Kara. “Here. You must be starving. Will this tide you over until dinner time? Oh, are you even staying?”

“Yes, please.” Kara began to make inroads into the food and drink. “So the filters …”

“Well, lead was a no go because doctors need light to operate on you and most electric lights emit UV radiation. We started with lead oxide, zinc oxide and titanium oxide. The last two you’d recognize from sunscreen lotions …” Lena went on to explain the rest but what it amounted to was that she and Aine had succeeded in making a viable filter in a soluble metallic-looking powder form that could be applied to clear plastic-like sheets which wouldn’t melt absorbing or reflecting infra red radiation. The filters could be folded over lights as well as used to line rooms.

“So wait, you’re going to market them widely?” Kara suddenly wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Lena stopped unloading bacon into a pan for a second, then she finished the task and washed her hands before turning to face Kara.

“You’re worried about people trapping you in a room or just covering you with this material after they’ve rendered you unconscious.”

Kara nodded slowly. She could see Lena’s defensive hackles rising. “Hey, remember I promised not to be an ass?”

Lena stopped hardening up more, but she didn’t relax either. She was listening, though.

“I’m not … objecting, Lena. This is not like the synthetic kryptonite. The filter is a really useful product. Lead also has many uses and I don’t go around thinking manufacturers of it and people who buy it are planning anything against me. It’s just that the red sun lamps and kryptonite are restricted and difficult to make or obtain. These filters would have a similar effect but it sounds like anyone can buy them.”

Lena leaned against the kitchen counter. “Kara, the theory behind the filter is really basic. Anyone can also paint a plastic sheet with silver over lead. That would reflect some radiation and absorb some. If they managed to line a room with that, it would affect you too, just not quite so completely since some radiation would still get through. The point is, even without this new product, anyone who’s studied grade school physics and chemistry could plan such a thing against you. What you need is not for us to refrain from distributing these filters, but a counteracting influence. Like a yellow sun grenade.”

“Which is dangerous for humans,” Kara pointed out. “The DEO has them. I can carry them around. But what would be the use if I can’t deploy them most of the time? I accept that you _should_ distribute your product, by the way, just to be clear.”

Lena thought. “Radioactive material can be injected. In the circumstances in which you would need to deploy a yellow sun grenade, chances are that a normal needle would penetrate your skin. Can Alex make something like an Epi-pen using Nth metal needles?”

Kara brightened. “I’ll ask.”

They lapsed into silence. Lena turned to the stove and switched it on with subdued movements.

“Have I upset you?” Kara was worried.

“No,” Lena said, her back still turned.

Kara went and stood where she could see her profile, careful to keep her distance. “I think I have.”

Lena breathed. Then she faced Kara again. “You voiced a legitimate concern instead of brooding about it. As a result we discussed it and identified the real concern as something else, which we also discussed how to address. You haven’t done anything wrong. It … just brought memories to mind. If I’m quiet now, it’s because I’m trying to put them to one side, not because you’ve upset me afresh.”

She turned to a basket of figs and began to split them.

Not knowing what to do and afraid to push, Kara went to finish her bread and cheese watchfully. Eventually Lena’s shoulders lowered while she was systematically stuffing the figs with goat’s cheese and Kara was silently relieved.

Finally Lena turned the stove off and lined a tray with baking paper. “Hey, come see please.”

Kara trotted over.

“Here.” Lena rolled a stuffed fig in a strip of cooked bacon and held the whole together with a toothpick stuck through it. “Can you do the rest while I get changed?”

Kara diligently did the fiddly work. When Lena re-emerged smelling citrussy and looking refreshed and no longer stiff, she took one look at Kara’s nonplussed expression staring down at the tray and smirked. “You’ll be thankful in a few minutes.”

When the tray came out from the oven and Kara tried her first morsel, her eyes rolled back and she fell back in her chair.

Lena gave a short laugh. “Drama queen.”

“Thish … ish … shhhhoooo … goooood!” Kara sighed, long and blissful. She cast a mournful glance at the single tray. Why, she could probably eat five trays and still want more tomorrow!

“I didn’t make too many since I wasn’t certain you’d like them,” Lena said. “But since you do ….”

Kara gave the tray a lovesick look and Lena laughed again. “I’ll know better next time. And now you know the ingredients and how to make this. You’re probably able to get the best figs from wherever anyway.”

Kara gasped and sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. “I can get more figs here in, like, an hour!”

“They’re supposed to be _appetizers_ ,” Lena pointed out, “not the main course. Eat too many and they’ll have a laxative effect.”

Kara, who had never suffered bad effects from human food on her Kryptonian alimentary system, gave her a pitiful look. Lena looked back expressionlessly and crossed her arms.

Kara got on her knees and held up her clasped hands in a prayerful gesture. “Pretty, pretty please, Lena? Please, please, pleeeeezzz?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, get up, you loon!”

“Pleeeeezzzz?”

“Well, _I’m_ not having more than four. You can have the rest. But you’re not fetching more. I don’t want to deal with a super-gut emergency tonight, thank you very much!”

“Pleeeeeeeezzzzz!!!”

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Lena threw up her hands. “If you explode all over my bathroom it will be your own damned fault! … And there she goes…” she trailed off as a gleeful Kara held up a promising ‘just wait’ finger at her and whooshed off. Resignedly but with good humour she went to get out more bacon and goat cheese.

Kara came back from a Turkish night bazaar with what looked like half a bushel of fresh figs and a couple of bottles of lemon cologne which she presented to Lena with a flourish.

“Same smell,” she gestured at the bottles and then at Lena.

“Good nose,” Lena returned. “Thank you. But that’s a lot of figs.”

“Ah, but I have superspeed!” Kara grinned. “You do the bacon, I do the figs and the rolling up?”

They ended up with enough for a banquet. Lena daintily ate her four and went on to have pasta salad. She dished out a Kryptonian-sized portion of that for Kara.

“Oh hey, do you still keep in touch with James?” Kara rested her forearms on the table when she was finished and peered at Lena.

Lena pushed her own plate away. “Not really. He emails articles he gets published, usually about your cousin. We don’t actually say much to each other. Why?”

“He and I had a bit of dust up before he left National City,” Kara confessed. “I said some pretty harsh things. At the time I was just so angry and frustrated in general.”

“Uh oh. Do I want to know what you said?”

“I might have told him that he had an unhealthy obsession with misinterpreting Superman as validating the concept of an alpha male his younger self had wisely chosen not to adopt. I might have said that it caused him to develop a male-centric view of relationships with women that he never had before. I might also have said that his frustration with not having Superman’s powers made him insecure about his masculinity, and made him compensate by being unnecessarily self-righteous and judgmental, using his protection of me as Kal’s cousin as an excuse, so that he stepped way, way beyond the bounds of Kal’s original request, which was just to keep a watchful eye out and help where he could.”

Lena’s lips parted just a bit. That was her being _very_ surprised. “Oh my!”

Kara sighed. “I was ungrateful. He’s done a lot for me but I concentrated on the bad stuff.”

“If you’re looking to repair your relationship with him,” Lena said, “he and I don’t talk enough for me to be much help. We’re not hostile but that’s pretty much the extent of it.”

“No, no. I just thought I’d tell you so if he says anything bitter about me to you, you’ll understand where he’s coming from.” Kara slumped. “You wanna know the really bad thing? I don’t actually regret saying any of that because I truly believe it all. I just regret being ungrateful, like I threw all the help he gave me down the drain. But our relationship started going downhill a long time ago. The outburst was all built up over a couple of years of not ever letting my frustrations with him fully out.”

Lena shook her head and stood up. “You clear the table and I’ll make coffee?”

“You know,” Kara said five minutes later, up to the elbows in dishwashing suds, “I had this crush on him before you came to National City?”

“Uh huh. Although I can't remember _how_ I know.”

“Well, back then he was a really great guy. I was just starting out and not doing so well, and James was connected to Kal, who I looked up to as a real established hero who had everything together. And you know, James is physically very attractive and he’s charming - until his dominance in a relationship is tested. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t know _that_ until you.” Kara grimaced. “And that was when the rant began being put together subconsciously in my head, I think. Looking back, It was the point where I essentially gave up on him. I mean, in theory I want to be friends again, but if he’s still the same, what’s the point, you know?”

“May I ask why he’s on your mind tonight?” Lena poured out the coffee.

“Well, I was thinking about the filters. I like the fact that you had more than one sound reason for making them. Sycophancy, that’s it. James is a sycophant and you are not. That’s what brought him to mind. You never pander. It’s why I trust you so much, why I haven’t completely trusted him since the whole Guardian business began. It was all about sycophancy and compensation and I never said that to him until the end.”

Lena looked pleased for a few seconds, then with a completely straight face, she set out what Kara initially thought was an abomination: rhubarb cake.

She grinned at Kara’s appalled expression. “Remember the figs. Just try it. I’ll make bread and butter pudding if you don’t like it.”

Kara ended up eating all of it except for the slice Lena took. “This seems to be your night for introducing me to weird things with _vegetables_ that taste great.” She sighed contentedly.

“Figs,” said Lena, with a cat-like flick of lint off her shoulder, “are fruit.”

“Uh … speaking of figs ….” Kara’s eyes widened suddenly. Her lips pursed tightly in imitation of other body parts doing the same.

“Kara?”

Kara gulped. “Bathroom!” There was a whoosh.

Lena buried her face in her hands and shook with silent laughter for a long minute. When she went to lay a set of clean sweats outside the bathroom, she heard the sounds of industrious scrubbing through the door as Kara super-speeded her way through cleaning up. She knocked to inform her of the fresh clothes with a wavering voice. After that she went back to the remains of her coffee but found herself laughing too hard to drink it before it got cold.

She was still in hysterics when a red-faced and sheepish Kara marched back in, freshly showered and wearing Lena’s sweats.

“It was totally worth it!” Kara insisted defensively. “And the bathroom is now spotless!”

This nearly sent Lena into whoops. She held her stomach, pointed weakly at Kara and couldn’t speak.

Kara rolled her eyes and pouted – to no effect. Lena slowly keeled over, still holding her stomach, shoulders shaking violently. Tiny ‘uk ..uk ..uk’ noises of mirth spirted out of her.

Kara pouted her way to the television but it took a quarter of hour before a grinning Lena, smelling of toothpaste and mouthwash, came to join her. 

“Oh, for a Supergirl blog to write this up on!”

“Leeenaaaa!!!”

“Sorry, sorry!” But Lena didn’t look sorry at all. In fact the second she said that, her grin came right back.

Kara harrumphed.

“Well, I warned you. And they weren’t _toxic_ ,” Lena pointed out. “Figs just do what they do, they move through your digestive system. Quickly. In your case, super quickly! No wonder you don’t eat vegetables. What your gut would do with all that roughage …”

Kara threw a cushion at her before she could crumble into hysteria again.

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, yes. Many supercorp writers have preceded me in expressing concern that the SG screenwriters seem to think nothing of impliedly promoting unhealthy relationship models on primetime television for the delectation of the masses. For me, the screenwriters' ideas of what constitutes a desirable male-female relationship, which seem to be those of juvenile/immature male, sit within the larger issues of their weirdly improper sense of ethics. Is it even weirder in that context that the best written relationships are Alex's? 
> 
> In addition, do the screenwriters understand the difference between 'inclusivity' (what they are saying) and tokenism (what they seem to be actually doing)? Maybe it's because I don't watch the series at all religiously and I've missed something.


	8. Uncertainty

**Chapter 9**

A couple of weeks later, Kara made a quick call to Lena before taking off from her apartment. After some discussion, Lena had pierced her ears under the red sun lamp the previous weekend and put in a pair of ear studs. They were modest looking clear crystal, set in titanium. The right one was a wireless stereo-video botcam, hence the clear crystal – they didn’t want distorted images. The left one was a transmitter-receiver with a tiny microphone.

She checked to find that Lena was receiving both images and sound quite satisfactorily before arriving at the scene she’d been called to and hovered for a few seconds, turning her head so Lena could take in the whole.

Their agreement was that Lena would stay silent so as not to distract Kara, unless and until she felt she had something useful to say: Kara also had the DEO communicator in her right ear, so confusion was very possible and they wanted to minimize it. It was also why Lena’s voice, if it came at all, would come in her _left_ ear, while the botcam ensured that Lena could hear what came out of the DEO communicator.

Someone had sabotaged the city train tracks. Kara zoomed in on the point of interference. The commuter train was passing over a switch that should have led it to a stop near the government offices. Instead the new track would now lead it straight for a head-on collision with a goods train. And the goods train had been already been re-directed from its original destination depot: that was how the alarm had been given. It was easy to extrapolate the intended point of collision: Central Station - which was filled with people during lunch hour.

“Supergirl, the train drivers have been alerted but they’re both reporting that their brakes aren’t functioning.” Alex’s voice was clipped with tension. “Central Station’s being evacuated by guards rather than public announcement to avoid a stampede. The evacuation won’t be complete by the time the trains get there.”

“It’s too late to do anything about the switch,” Kara said. “I can stop one train, but it’ll need a stopping distance.”

“Stop the commuter train. J’onn’s going to stop the goods train.”

“The commuter train’s much faster, longer stopping distance.” Kara was already hovering in front of it: sliding on the ground with the friction generated by that kind of force would just wear her boot soles to nothing. _They_ weren’t indestructible. She had stopped a spaceship carrying Alex with just her flying force alone. Her hands stretched out towards the nose of the train.

“Supergirl, no!” Lena squawked urgently. Of course she couldn’t have known what Kara had intended until the instant she saw those hands reaching forward on her viewscreen. “If you stop it cold like that the back of the train won’t bleed off momentum at the same rate as the front where you are. It’ll derail! Or you’ll cause impact injuries!”

“What do I do?” Kara shouted, drawing back her hands in panic.

“Supergirl?” Alex sounded bewildered _and_ panicked.

“Stop it a little bit at a time.” Lena’s voice was dead calm now. “One second of resistance without pushing, now back off a little and let it slow ... good, again ... that’s it, keep going. Let J’onn derail the goods train – there’s no one on the rear wagons to be injured and the driver’s at the front. Goods trains go much more slowly anyway. Maybe it won’t derail. Okay, that’s slow enough. Now hold the resistance ... steady ... steady ... all right, now dig in all the way and stop it.”

The train rolled to a gradual halt safely to cheers and thanks from the passengers and observers left in Central Station.

Kara thanked Lena profusely and signed off. After work that night, she and Alex bought takeout and went to Alex’s apartment.

...

“ ... so Lena talked you through the right way to do it. I wondered why you pulled up suddenly like that and who you were shouting to. I didn’t even think of the train possibly derailing because it wasn’t on a curve,” Alex marveled as she peered at the ear studs one by one. Kara couldn’t take them out or the holes would just close up. “I guess she doesn’t get to be thanked by the public though.”

“We thought it might be best that the DEO doesn’t know anyone else can watch and listen in. It was just a test run to make sure it would work so I can have an alternative source of back up. If I ever need it, chances are it won’t be her on the other end, it would be you or Brainy if either of you weren’t affiliated with the DEO anymore. For now, she'll only patch in when she’s available. She’s pretty busy and there’s the time difference. I suppose if I expect a tricky situation, I’ll ask her if she can reschedule whatever else she has on. She thinks most of the time I fly too fast for her to see anything so expect me to fly slower when I’m close in and to hover to assess a situation first from now on.”

Alex nodded. “I won’t report it. There seems to be no alien involvement after all, and NCPD’s on the case tracking down the saboteurs. By tomorrow the DEO’s recording will be filed away. If anyone does ask, we can pass it off as you spotting the risk of derailment just in time and talking to yourself about what to do instead. But next time ...”

Kara shrugged. “I’ll just turn off the DEO device in my ear for a while if I have to talk to her. It’s there because I’m cooperating and coordinating with you guys. I’m not obliged to keep it on and if they ask why I turn it off, I’ll tell them I needed to not be distracted for a while so I could think without people yelling in my ear.”

“I do not _yell_!” Alex said, affronted.

“Not you, doofus! And anyway, _you_ can yell in my ear anytime. But I can hear the background noises behind you and Winn, though I love him to death, sometimes had the most inopportune commentary and the way he would panic and scream …” Kara smiled fondly and shook her head. “Sometimes he was such a distraction that he was almost more hindrance than help because I had to work to tune him out. Even Brainy panics sometimes. Lena somehow never does. Today she just got straight to the point and stayed calm and told me exactly what to do without wasting time stating probabilities. She’s a great handler. And she liked doing it. She said it made her feel like Theora Jones in Max Headroom.”

“So how are things between you two?” 

“Do you have a couple of hours?” Kara asked wryly.

“Actually I do,” Alex smiled. “Seriously, go on.”

“Overall they’re going well. We’ve had a couple of little fights ...”

One had been, inevitably, about Lena killing Lex, but since Lena had admitted that she had done it as much because of the harm he had been doing to so many people and the deaths he was continuing to cause as for Supergirl and her friends, that had been a lesser fight than Kara had expected. A bigger fight had been about how Lena had been so terrified for Kara’s safety and felt so responsible for it over and over again when there had been absolutely no need for her to go through that. Lena had been particularly angry about that because it was all of a piece with Kara putting Lena’s life at risk to preserve her secret. What if Lena had had a physical ailment and the stress that Kara had knowingly caused on top of the other stress caused by Lex had caused a heart attack or stroke or seizure that could have left her dead or paralyzed? Her point had been that, while in principle Kara was entitled to guard her secret identity, she only _had_ a secret identity because she had _volunteered_ to do _good_ in the first place as a superhero; so if keeping her secret risked _harm_ , especially to someone Kara dared to call a friend, then what the hell did she think she was doing?

“ ... but we’re talking and not shutting down on each other. I mean, she’s working on herself, like you and I have been working on _our_ selves. And she’s always known that most of it is needed because of her family. She was not a trusting person even when she first came to National City and then there was Lex and Lillian and none of that was my fault. But I still feel like we, _I_ , pulled her out of the mire only to push her back in deeper.”

“And yet it seems to be working out,” Alex pointed out. “As you say, she’s not shutting down on you and now she's doing stuff for you, while she doesn’t seem to want to hear from the rest of us.” Alex pouted a little.

“Well, you have to remember that she and my reporter self were friends before she really met the rest of you. And we weren’t just fair weather friends. We called each other out on different things and it didn’t affect the respect and affection we had for each other. So we had a different kind of relationship from what she had with you. I built on that by staying around to be vented at and sticking it out to prove that I really wanted that friendship to continue. But all of you became friendly with her only because of me. I think she sees all of your unhesitating and unstinting support for me as a ... well, as a danger. Because you guys don’t call me on my bullshit unless it adversely affects someone in the group. I mean, you pulled me up about moving to Metropolis with Clark because it affected _you_ but otherwise, it’s true, you generally don't. So long as it’s convenient for DEO or doesn’t affect you or it, she thinks you all don't care if I do wrong by others. So yes, she treats me differently from the rest of you, because she's always been able to call me out but she doesn't feel like she can with any of you. But she also knows how important you are to me and she’s asked after you. I told her about everything you’ve been doing to be better. I’m pretty sure if you asked to visit, she’d say yes.”

“Really?” Alex looked hopeful. It had been eating at her to have to just let Lena go like that.

“Mhm. But look, Alex, she makes a very clear distinction between you and the DEO. She knows you have professional obligations you can’t duck. So there's no point going before you’ve figured out where _you_ draw the line between personal and professional. Don't just hare off because you want to make yourself feel better by apologising.”

Alex nodded slowly and Kara knew she’d been heard.

“So anyway, we talk, we even joke and laugh,” Kara continued. “She says I have to find a way to forgive myself. At this point she basically wants to write it off, like a bad debt she has to accept will never be repaid because by its nature it’s simply not repay _able_. She’s pragmatic like that. And as you say, she’s doing stuff for me. But I think she does all these things as much for the people I save as for me, because it’s not in her nature to want anyone harmed, including me." She paused, looking troubled. "The thing is, she doesn’t make demands or ask anything of me or tell me anything as private as she used to.” 

“So she’s not trusting or relying on you,” Alex interpreted. “But Lena’s used to being self-reliant. I mean, apart from that one time she asked Supergirl to protect her gala and asked you as Kara Danvers to attend so she’d have a friendly face around, has she ever really asked you for anything before? She’s never actually asked for a save, even. You’ve always just turned up.”

“Not like she could have,” Kara answered moodily. “I didn’t give her the watch before because I was afraid she’d use it while I was with her as Kara Danvers, and she was hardly likely to call a human reporter she liked and drag her into danger. So she had no _way_ to ask for a save.”

Alex smiled. “And even when she did ask for help she set her own trap. Look, Kara, some people are just like that. When she sees that someone else can help and she can ask, she asks. Otherwise she just deals with it because she can and no one else can. Like you deal with an alien when no one else can. Like I deal with many DEO situations without asking you for help. And let’s face it, if you didn’t have powers, if I didn’t know how to fight as well as I can, could either of us have walked alone into the situations she did? She’s not a fluffy, helpless little kitten and she never will be. We’re all smart, independent people who face what we have to face, alone if we must.”

“We all have each other the rest of the time, though,” Kara huffed. “She doesn’t. She probably feels she never had any of us, even me.”

“She’s used to it,” Alex pointed out. “Which is not to say I want that to continue, but Kara, everyone’s different. Each of us has different needs. I would think that if you want any kind of trust and reliance from her, you have to find out what she does need instead of stewing about what she doesn’t. I must say I agree with her attitude about writing off the past. Haven’t you wallowed in guilt and apologized and punished yourself enough already?”

There was a short silence during which Kara’s body stopped thrumming with tension as she absorbed Alex's point.

Alex nudged her. “Hey, does Lena even like girls?” she asked in an effort to lighten the atmosphere.

Kara stared at her, unable to keep the flush from rising up her neck. “You know?” she squeaked.

Alex looked at her patiently.

“Of course you do.” Kara sighed.

“Let’s just say that while you always go all out for any of your friends and family, this time you weren’t just determined to do everything you could. There’s been a desperate, tragic weight hanging round your neck that’s too obvious for me not to see. So ... how about answering my question?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Doesn’t it?” Alex ruffled Kara’s hair gently and then smoothed it back down.

“She can like girls and not like _me_ ,” Kara pointed out. “Yes or no to me is all that matters, not the reason why.”

Alex considered that. “That, my young padawan, is a remarkably profound and enlightened statement for its simplicity. I suppose I was thinking that if she finds women acceptable dates, then your chances are improved.”

Kara shook her head. "One thing I've learned from all my volunteer work: if you find a label comforting because it tells you you're not alone, that other people have gone through what you're going through, that there's light at the end of the tunnel, that there's an explanation for what you're feeling and that you're okay as you are, then that's great. But if further down the road, it makes you refuse to acknowledge feeling something new because you feel like you have to be loyal to that label, if it prevents you from recognizing that it no longer fits so well as it used to do under previous circumstances, if it stops you from being the new you you _should_ be and instead have to contort yourself so your self-image continues to fit into it, then the label ceases to give you power. Instead you've given _it_ power over you that a word or phrase simply shouldn't have.": Kara waited for Alex to think about that and at her nod, went on, "So I don't worry about whether Lena's _past relationships_ tell me whether I have a chance. I'm going to let _her_ tell me."

Alex nodded slowly again.

“Anyway I think ... I’ve made it pretty obvious to her too, the way I’ve been hanging about,” Kara reflected. “We’ve had a couple of moments ...”

The first time Lena had caught Kara staring at her, she had looked perplexed. The second time, the confusion was still there to start with but it gave way to a realization that she hadn't been mistaken the first time. Then Lena had taken on neutral expression that was impossible to read. But she hadn’t lessened their interactions and Kara had caught the odd puzzled expression on her face. It was as if Lena had identified her besotted look but couldn’t entirely accept all at once that she should associate it with Kara. It took a little while, during which Lena seemed cautious about looking at her suddenly and catching her off guard. She would look up slowly, giving plenty of warning, and then her eyes would flit away and back shyly, not settling, not staring back. But while Kara didn’t want overwhelm Lena suddenly, she also didn’t wish to hide how she felt anymore. Eventually, she had been rewarded on her last visit when Lena had finally met her eyes steadily, with just the tiniest quirk to her lips.

“... I get the feeling she’s thinking about it. So I have hope. It's ... unexpected. I thought I’d shot my own chances into the ground and buried them six feet under.”

“She _is_ a private person, very reserved, probably more so now,” Alex observed. “If she’s giving you that impression, I imagine it’s deliberate. She was straightforward with James and I don’t remember her ever stringing along a line of hopeful suitors, which she could have. Money and power translate into enough pulling power to overcome the Luthor name and once people make the effort to honestly be good to her, they’d see she was worth it. So although I don’t know her as well as you, she doesn’t strike me as the type to lead you on.”

“I can hope ... at least we’re able to have a good time together.” Kara giggled all of a sudden. “Oh, wait! I meant to tell you … we had this whole conversation. She doesn’t like Harry Potter!”

“No!” Alex gasped. “What a dealbreaker! Disqualify her immediately. Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.”

“Well, actually, she doesn’t _hate_ it,” Kara amended. “Apparently Lillian didn’t allow that sort of reading material at home so when she first went to boarding school she’d never read any and didn’t have her own copies. And the school wouldn’t put it on the library shelves although they didn’t ban it or anything. Anyway when she first went she read a lot of other stuff first before she became curious about what her classmates were talking about and then she borrowed the first book and found it hard going in comparison so she stopped reading any more. Hard going, Alex!”

“Sacrilege!” Alex said dryly. “In comparison to what?”

Kara dug in her pocket and drew out a folded scrap of paper. Alex grinned at the importance Kara seemed to place on this. “Let’s see ... she said anything by Diana Wynne Jones was brilliant and she had a soft spot for a boy hero called Artemis Fowl.”

“Who?” Alex squinted.

“Extremely wealthy Irish child genius with a difficult personality, inherited the family business, very focused on his own goals but ultimately capable of great love and loyalty.” Kara remembered that verbatim.

Alex began to laugh. “Oh, no way! So _impossible_ for her to identify with him, eh?”

Kara sniffed. “She said that attracted her at first but she _continued_ reading because the writing style was fun and easy to read. The author’s Irish too.”

She gave Alex, who still laughing fit to burst, the evil eye.

Finally Alex wiped her eyes and calmed down. “Kara, really, what’s the deal with this?”

“Nothing! It was just a fun thing I wanted you know.”

“No, I meant ... well, you said that Lena wasn’t telling you private things, but this seems pretty personal. Not something you could just look up about her on the internet.”

Kara frowned in thought. Alex persisted. “Come on, just because something isn’t gutwrenching or awful doesn’t mean it’s not personal. If she had minded telling you that, I imagine she could have deflected.”

Slowly Kara’s smile began to dawn with her comprehension.

“See? Little steps, baby sister. Remember she isn’t you. You’re all fluff and sap when it comes to these things. If Lena isn’t, don’t be fooled into being psyched out by yourself. Personally it doesn’t sound like you’re doing too badly to me.”

When Kara hugged Alex goodbye, she was in a much better frame of mind. 

…


	9. Development; On The Cusp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another two chapters in one.

**Chapter 10**

Little by little, Lena began to realize that Kara was now with her on average two or three times a week. She brought pizza and potstickers and donuts (often the more elastic bready British doughnuts Lena had grown to like at boarding school), cheerfully made pancakes and peer pressured Lena into sharing where Lena would otherwise have been perfectly happy with yoghurt, muesli and salads for most of her meals. With her around so much, Lena took the time to cook a little more and let herself put off work that could be put off.

Once Kara came a little earlier than expected. Hovering overhead and listening in as usual before landing just in case she was coming into the scene of an attack (with Lena you never knew) or an interaction for which Lena might want privacy, she heard Lena muttering softly, “ … so Horace quacked with joy upon finding the Green Boat at long last. The Green Boat was happy because Horace pulled away the waterweeds clogging its rudder and it could finally float free into the sunshine. And they traveled together back to the quiet lake where they had met and lived forever after in pansexual happiness under the willow trees that formed their sheltered home.” There had been a few little splashes and Kara realized to her utter delight that Lena was evidently taking a bath. She waited half an hour and then landed and knocked. Her fake insouciance lasted through exactly ten minutes and three suspicious glances from Lena, after which she excused herself to the bathroom and hunted around until she discovered the rubber duck and plastic boat tidily resting in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cabinet. 

Another time Kara came with almost no notice, in tears from a school bus crash in which several kids had died and several more had been terribly injured. She cried herself out while hugging a large cushion she had previously appropriated as her favourite, kneading it gently like a disturbed housecat. Lena calmed her down by giving her several thick slices of fresh bread slathered with butter, honey and peanut butter and several more of cinnamon toast as well as a half a gallon of hot chocolate, on the theory that it was impossible to keep crying wholeheartedly whilst occupied with eating. After that she sent Kara off to take a long, hot, soothing bath with Horace and the Green Boat and put her to bed in the guest room.

Then Lena was attacked on a visit to the Shanghai docks. Her security detail had responded admirably and Lena got a chance to try out a modified miniature Nth metal crossbow shaped like a handgun that fired blunt three-inch long lead bolts. It wasn’t a lethal weapon unless Lena was lucky (or unlucky) enough to hit a fragile bone in a human skull but she wasn’t intending to aim for heads anyway. Aimed at centre mass or limbs, it could stun and bruise even through bulletproof vests (which protected the wearer from penetration, not impact) and it could cripple, and it did those exceedingly well when Lena used it. Its only drawback was that it required two full seconds of re-draw time before the next bolt could be fired, but it used no chemicals, only an ingenious automated draw mechanism, and tiny Nth metal springs made its range formidable. She normally kept it closed, telescoped down into a discreet little blackjack that she found extremely handy. As soon as she realized that the attack was being reported on international news channels, she texted Kara that all was well while still being interviewed by the Chinese police. But Kara was already on her way, having seen the first few minutes of the newsreel, so Lena got back to her apartment to receive a bit of a scolding for ducking _away_ from her close-in guards in order to get a clear shot with her weapon. Lena was a little contrite, but the attackers had all been fully occupied by her security detail and she maintained that the risk had been small: if they had begun to turn their sights on her, they would have gone down immediately. Kara sulked. Lena sighed. Then she revealed that she had made a similar crossbow for Kara. After all it had never been explained to her why Kara _had_ to engage every opponent up close and personal just because she had superpowers. Captivated by the thought of being able to avoid alien spit, slime and spikes, and to do that with a weapon that wasn’t lethal, could be tucked into a boot or a belt and was recognizably made with human ingenuity alone, _and_ that carried lead bolts that could be melted over a source of kryptonite with heat vision, Kara forgot to sulk anymore.

Alex came to visit. There was bit of frigid fighting along the lines of: ‘ _one of the first things that happened when I moved to National City was that you saved my life and I saved yours. I thanked you for saving my life. Did you ever even acknowledge that I saved yours, let alone thank me for it? How do you THINK I got the impression that like the Red Queen I had to work myself to the limit just to stand still and not go backwards in your eyes, that everything good I did was discounted and the smallest disagreement was cause for not just for suspicion but threatening action? Why do you THINK I kept Sam-as-Reign a secret from you?’_ and ‘ _how the hell do you consider doing everything you can to make an enemy where there was none PROTECTING Kara and everyone else you work with?’_ There had been tears, mostly from Alex, a few from Lena, and then there had been apologies and finally Lena had broken out the apple schnapps and they had got rousingly drunk together while Alex had imparted her wisdom and sympathies about difficult mothers. At 3am they blurrily patted each other on the shoulder (after missing several times) and resolved to be buddies after all, which did not, in Lena’s case, extend to the DEO. The following day was hangover day. The day after that Lena took Alex to CERN, where there were people with whom L-Corp had excellent business relations, and let her run wild. In the course of those days, Lena discovered that often when Kara came to visit her, Alex had been available and more than willing to take time off from her girlfriend if Kara needed someone to talk to.

All in all, a lot of prime time was devoted to Lena consistently over months by a busy superhero reporter, and it was clearly in _preference_ to the superfriends, because Kara didn’t get to have Lena and them all together now. She had to choose and she had chosen. And it wasn’t simply that she had chosen Lena over them. It was apparent each time Kara told her what she’d been doing since her last visit that her free time between visits was rarely spent with the superfriends club, which nowadays only tended to meet up maybe once every two weeks for drinks or for the newly reinstated game nights, which were now on Saturdays because Kara was either with Lena on most Fridays or with friends from her volunteer work if she wasn’t chasing a story. Kara was developing a social life that didn’t solely consist of people who equated loyalty to her with doing good. She was clearly distinguishing between the two and by example encouraging the rest of the superfriends to do the same, until they could see that a person could intend to do good, could actually do good, without slavish devotion to the path they chose.

Not until then did Lena realise how much she had needed them to understand that. She could never conform to that path. The livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people depended on her. She might very well have personal ambition but she saw no reason to deny herself if that ambition also benefited these people and all those that L-Corp’s efforts and products affected. She was entirely guiltless about her contracts with the DEO granting it products only and not designs. As if she was going to let them sequester away intellectual property that could benefit others! Ha! If she got fame, wealth, power and respect with her control of that intellectual property, well, that was the way the world worked and those _were_ discoveries made by _her_ intellect.

As for Kara, Lena did what any sensible person would do. She took the ‘table scraps’ metaphor off the table as being no longer applicable. It was pointless to wonder if it had in fact been applicable in the past. She was concerned with the present and the future.

Kara was as imperfect as any mortal being, but she tried and tried and there was now no question that Lena did take some sort of priority in her life. In her turn, she brought a lot to Lena’s life. She was the most effective countermeasure for Lena’s occasional bouts of gloom that might otherwise have devolved into depression. She always made Lena laugh and feel lighthearted. They’d been carrying on the most interesting discussions on all kinds of subjects like the painful ‘Supers don’t kill’ and ‘when is it does cease to be right to keep your identity a secret from someone’ to children’s fiction, movies, Kryptonian and human law. These discussions made Lena feel alive, widened her perspective, gained her knowledge and wisdom. Despite her powers, Kara made Lena feel like an equal. They gave each other support and comfort in equal measure.

Honestly, Kara deserved a medal for bearing with the patience of Job Lena’s passive-aggressive snide remarks for the first few months until her spleen had been vented and she no longer felt the bitchiness vibe overtaking her. Lena felt bad about that because although it was true that to some extent she felt those sneak attacks were deserved, it would probably have been kinder to have had just one big blowout once and for all instead of using Kara as the occasional verbal punching bag over all that time.

Lena had felt the need to make up for it. The last thing she wanted to be responsible for was Kara’s confidence in action being undermined. So out of her personal resources she’d made the ear studs and the whole system for sending and receiving transmissions. She had set up channels to divert the computer and satellite resources when necessary for proper backup, guidance and coordination of Supergirl in the field. At the moment the system was largely dormant, with Lena only occasionally going online as handler just to practise at it. There were even extra sets of studs to be pinned on lapels or helmets in the event that Supergirl got field support from outside the DEO. And Lena had made another kryptonite shield for Kara to give to Superman.

 _“Miss Luthor,_ **_you_** _were attacked by Lex,_ **_I_** _was attacked by Lex ...” Superman had shrugged on his thank you visit to her, “... it makes for a kind of fellow feeling, you know?” He had smiled his charming down-home-boy smile. “After the Venture incident, I wasn’t suspicious of you. If James had asked me, I would have told him that. If he was a little presumptuous, a little overbearing, in the way he interpreted my request to help my cousin when he could ... I apologize for indirectly being the cause. What I’m saying is, ...” he gestured at the kryptonite shield now on his chest, “you didn’t have to do this to get me onside.”_

_“That isn’t why I did it,” Lena had replied. “Duplicating the first one I gave Kara was really very little trouble for the benefit it could provide. There was no reason not to. Call it ... me discreetly thumbing my nose at the powers that be, who seem more prepared to take you and your cousin down than I would like."_

_They had shared a conspiratorial smile before he departed._

_Lena spared a thought for how her mother had incapacitated Supergirl with sound. There were other ways than kryptonite to subdue a Kryptonian on Earth. But she had other, far more vulnerable people to protect as her immediate concern. It was what she got paid for. She shrugged off the thought. She had done enough for the Kryptonians for now._

...

**Chapter 11**

After a fondue dinner Lena treated Kara to, they settled in Lena’s living room with the vague intention of watching TV. Or at least Lena did.

Kara was still in her street clothes from dinner. She hesitated for a minute, then she reached for the remote and muted the television.

“Lena, have you wondered why I pushed us into becoming best friends instead of just normal friends?

Lena looked wary. “As I recall, you pushed us to be friends from the start. I was the resistant one. It was why I reacted so badly to Lex’s disclosure of your identity, because I remembered that and believed for a short while that you engineered the friendship for other reasons until I remembered everything that you did for me.”

Kara winced at the reminder but soldiered on. “No, I mean, if we had just been _good_ friends, if I had wanted to spy you, that would have been enough.”

“I thought about you keeping tabs on me,” Lena replied. “But I dismissed the notion. I didn’t tell company secrets to anyone, not even you: the alien detection device was ready for market when I told you about it and we had no competitors for it so there was no point keeping it a secret anymore – I told you about it expecting that you’d write about it. And I only told you and Alex the salient details, but not anything else, about many of the personal dealings I had with Lex and my mother. Anyone would have lost patience after a year or so. You wouldn’t have wanted to spend time on a pretence that would yield nothing.”

“Oh,” Kara said, subdued.

“No,” Lena correctly gently, “it wasn’t a dig at you. What I’m saying is that it was another reason why I concluded that you were genuine about our friendship.”

“Ah,” Kara cheered up. “Well … there was a reason. For being best friends, I mean. I really liked you so much. If it wasn’t for how great I thought you were, I would have been content with just being good friends. But I wanted to spend time with you, I loved being around you. I wanted to make your life brighter and make you happier.”

Lena’s face was soft. “I believe you, Kara. Thank you – for all of that and for saying it.” She smiled a real, 100% Lena smile.

“But it was more than that. ...” Kara shifted in her seat. It was coming up to a year after Lena had left National City. Kara had thought of making a production of this. Or maybe of undergoing heroic trials to prove her worth. Or saving Lena’s life again. Or maybe courageously coming close to dying (in a totally _not_ pathetic way) so Lena might imagine the loss of her and react to that. But there was plain honesty in this mundane everyday moment where there was no life-threatening drama to affect or manipulate either of them. 

Nonetheless her heart was in her mouth as she leaned forward intently. “... The more I got to know you, the more I wanted. I couldn’t stop. That was why I was so afraid to lose you. I couldn’t stand the thought. I was young and immature and very, very foolish and I went about it all wrong. So wrongly that I can’t blame if you don’t believe this. But Lena, you've always been, you still are, my bright particular star...”

Lena froze for a second. Then her hand went to her mouth, and Kara heard a tiny, nearly subvocal, “Oh _no_ …”, a _gorgeously_ feminine little cry of recognition, mingled dismay and reluctant delight that spurred her on.

“... and in _your_ bright radiance and collateral light, I felt my heart could dance, could sing, could fly, could _be._ ”

Lena was staring again, but there was a sheen to her eyes. Feeling encouraged, Kara went on, “This planet’s sun may enhance my body, but for a long time now, Lena, it's been you that’s fed my heart. I would do anything, give anything, if you would give me a chance at more with you.”

Lena was still staring, silent.

“I mean, of course you don’t have to say yes. But if it’s only because you still don’t trust me ... well, I’ve waited a long time to ask and I can wait as long as necessary ...” Kara faltered.

Lena gazed down at the coffee table, her hands tightly clasped together. “It isn’t that. People go on first dates all the time without knowing or trusting the person they’re with. That’s what dating is meant to achieve, the building of familiarity and trust. You could say we have something of a head start already.”

Kara’s heart sank. “So you just don’t feel that way ...”

“No,” Lena interrupted, “it isn’t that either. Just ... give me a minute.”

Kara waited in agonized suspense.

“In the beginning,” Lena said slowly, “when we were not yet truly friends but were in the _process_ of becoming so, I ... ah ... hinted ... that I was interested. I ... don’t really know how to flirt deliberately. Or so I’ve been told. If I _end up_ flirting it’s done unconsciously, inadvertently, and is nearly always more behavioural than verbal. But things like inviting you to an event as my particular guest, sending you flowers, those were deliberate expressions of interest. In a majority heterosexual society these gestures were ambiguous enough to have given me plausible deniability if you proved to be unreceptive or other people commented on it and tried unfairly to embarrass either of us in public. On the other hand, if you had been predisposed to something more than friendship with me, I thought they would have been sufficient to encourage reciprocation. I was never ashamed, mind you. But I had enough bad publicity on my plate to deal with at the time and you were beginning your career as a reporter. I didn’t need unnecessary and untrue scandal on my head. Neither did you, come to that. But if you _had_ reciprocated I would certainly have been willing to be seen with you in public.

But then, you see, you _didn’t_ reciprocate. And I’m a pragmatist. I concluded that the ground was too unpromising to set myself up further. I put the possibility of something more out of my mind and set myself on the path of friendship. Until the hammer fell, I was glad of that choice because I thought we were both greatly enriched by it.”

She paused and gazed at Kara, who was round-eyed with dismay. “Do you mean I missed the receptivity bus? Of all the _worst_ times to be oblivious! I swear I never realised.”

“I _know_ you didn’t.” Lena smiled at her wryly. “So you _weren’t_ predisposed in that way. And then I gathered, although I didn’t know this at first, that you were already ... occupied with Mike or ... I can’t remember his name. That Monash ... Mon-ass ... prince fellow.”

“Mon-El,” Kara groaned. “Oh boy, is _that_ a long story.”

“You’ll have to tell me some day ...” Lena trailed off for a second. “Anyway, I closed the door on that idea and never revisited it. I’m not saying no now. It’s just ... an adjustment. What I intended way back then, what we became to each other, are both very different from what _this_ would be now.”

Kara gave her a speaking look.

“What?” Lena frowned at her, puzzled.

“Maybe I should tell you that long story now.”

...

“Okay, so, you need background first. See, this whole area of relationships was the strangest thing about Earth to me in my youth ...” 

Lena turned an amused expression on her and sipped her coffee. They had paused to ensure they had something to drink ready to hand before Kara began.

“... The first thing to know is that Kryptonians reproduced asexually and by artificial means. We were capable of doing it sexually but natural conception was ... chancy. At one point, there was concern about the population declining and they introduced the genesis chambers and matrix matching and population control laws for genetic engineering. Spouses were invariably matched by the matrix and only they were allowed access to the genesis chambers. So single people and pairs who didn’t screen as having been matched by the matrix couldn’t use them.”

“I think I get the idea of genesis chambers from the name. If reproduction was asexual, they must have extracted genetic material from each parent and formed an embryo and nurtured it in the chamber until it was mature enough to be let into the world,” Lena postulated. “Is that right? The Daxamites had something similar, didn’t they?”

“Exactly. But we had a matrix which was made to match individuals for species advancement and compatibility.”

“How?”

“When a candidate reached what you’d call marriageable age, the matrix took a reading and matched it against the population codex,” Kara explained. “The matching procedure took account of genetic as well as environmental factors.”

Lena frowned. “The variables must have been well nigh unmanageable.”

“YES!” Kara pointed at her in excited agreement. “The whole problem was the system was inherently imperfect. The highest priority factor on the matrix had to be to prevent inbreeding, right?”

Lena nodded.

“Okay, so you input that factor and other high priority factors like resistance to diseases and longevity. But then, do you go for increasing the _average_ intellectual and physical attributes across the entire population or do you match excellence with excellence?”

“Average,” was Lena’s immediate answer, “because otherwise you create a genetic elite and a huge underclass. Or I suppose you could work towards increasing the averages for the general populace and, as a separate endeavour, breed towards achieving elite individuals with certain particularly desirable traits, like the _Bene Gesserit_ did in _Dune_.”

“Right! Well, we chose to average out. So say the best choices for candidate X’s optimal spouse are Y, X’s offspring with whom would have increased intelligence but decreased disease immunity, or Z, X’s offspring with whom would be physically superior but intellectually inferior. How do you choose? So then the second tier factors, the ones that went toward compatibility, not survival and evolution, came into play. And the matrix would have been working with an available pool, not the full codex. The pool would have excluded the individuals who were already married or dead or not within the required age spectrum. The matrix chose the best, but only from the pool of availability left.”

“Ah. So that pool could have included X’s the best match some of the time but not _all_ of the time. Because if the best match for X was J, who was a couple of years older and was, two years before, matched with K, then J wouldn’t have been in the available pool for X,” Lena suggested.

“Well, two years before, J’s matrix reading would have included X because despite X being less than joining age, he or she would have been within the available age spectrum for J. So J might have waited. But you have in fact identified one of the major problems. The codex held genetic information about individuals but information relevant to evolution didn’t fully lend itself to measuring compatibility, which is partly dependent on environmental factors operating during childhood and adolescence. Two years before, X would have been known to be good match genetically for J but not necessarily a compatible match. So J would have been taking a risk in waiting for X to reach joining age, the risk that X wouldn’t, after all, be compatible. And by then, K might have married _his_ next best match.”

“Oh good heavens,” Lena said. “No offence, Kara, but that all sounds ridiculous!”

“None taken. The matrix was meant to make things easier, better. For years after I got here, I sort of mourned not having it and turned up my nose at how messy things were here. But now I don’t know if I believe it _was_ a better solution.”

Lena pursed her lips. “Reaching ideal matches across the entire population could never be entirely successful with everyone, not with so many factors to juggle amongst so many individuals of different ages, and compatibility variables changing all the time. I mean, adults here still have to grow through life. Sometimes that changes what they want in a partner. On the other hand, you must have had a much higher probability of marriages ... no, you said joining ... joinings being more successful than they are here, if Earth divorce rates are anything to go by.”

“We didn’t have an equivalent of divorce. As a child, all the joinings I encountered seemed to me at least quite happy, even if I now believe some individuals could have better off with someone else. It was utilitarian but it worked overall and some matches were pretty well perfect. I just don’t know that the end result was the best overall.” Kara stopped herself from going off further on that tangent because she was excited about her next point. She jigged a little on her rear. “AND there was ONE thing no computer could ever, EVER, factor in!” She held her breath and gazed at Lena in anticipation.

Lena raised an inviting eyebrow.

“Chemistry!” Kara burst out.

“Ah, so the genesis chambers were as much a polite way to deal with spouses who didn’t experience mutual sexual attraction as well as the biological difficulties of natural conception?”

“That’s it.” Kara nodded. “But see, sexual attraction still existed. I mean, after all we still had bodies that produced hormones and pheromones and the senses to detect and react to them. We were still just highly evolved animals.”

“So ...”

“So, a nuclear Kryptonian family was formed by matrix matching. But ... well, you know how even here on Earth, everyone has different people fulfilling different roles in their lives? Like you have professional friends to help fulfill your occupational aspirations, and friends to talk about hobbies with and friends to confide in about different things and then you have parents and children and siblings and some people have cooks and cleaners and drivers?”

Being one of the people who had had and still had some cooks and cleaners and drivers, Lena said gravely, “I think I do know, yes.”

She got a cushion shoved at her for her trouble and gave a little choke of laughter.

“Well, it was just like that on Krypton, except the family unit wasn’t built on sexual chemistry so _that_ was a role that a married adult might have a friend for as well!” Kara continued. “In fact, Kryptonians considered it wholly unrealistic to expect any one person to be all things, to fulfill all roles for his or her spouse.”

Lena’s face was a study in intrigue but Kara was very thankful to see no kneejerk criticism, just baffled fascination. She explained, “The foundation of a joining was compatibility in mind and brain and emotion and … well, the right combination of genes. It was expected that a married couple would work on their relationship and teach that to their children and all of that was the foundation of love and stability in the family unit. But sexual fulfilment was just something else that you _could_ have but didn’t _have_ to have with your spouse. For example if a candidate naturally preferred women for sex, it would have been in the codex at birth but the matrix could ignore that if available females were genetically unsuitable or modify it if socialization created in the candidate a degree of receptivity for males. A sexual partner was regarded the same way a golfing buddy might be here on Earth. There were no stigmatic words like cheating or betrayal or infidelity the way those words are used in relation to sex and marriage on Earth. Being unfaithful to a Kryptonian joining involved things like telling someone else something that was private to the family or being violent towards your spouse or child or, I don’t know, something absurd like trying to sell your children into slavery, I guess. It had nothing to do with sex, and sex had nothing to do with familial love. Although it wasn’t imposed by law, some people even went voluntarily to be sterilized when they reached puberty so as to be sure that the only children they produced would be from the genesis chambers. I mean, sexual reproduction _was_ actually prohibited by law so no one saw themselves as losing anything by being sterilized. It was all in the spirit of making our race advance efficiently and avoiding social disruption.”

Lena looked at her in some alarm. “Were _you_ sterilized?”

“Nah,” Kara shook her head. “Hadn’t quite reached puberty before I was sent off in the pod. And maybe my parents thought that, being one of the only two survivors, I shouldn’t be.”

“Okay,” Lena subsided for a second before perking up again. “So ... hold on, does that also mean there were never inheritance laws on Krypton based on primogeniture or feudalism even _before_ the genesis chambers and matrix matching were invented?”

“That’s right, and that’s exactly why!” Kara said enthusiastically. “In the very early days, land and assets _were_ passed down that way but that was so far in the past for us that there was no vestige of it left by the time the genesis chambers were created, which was already _generations_ before I emerged. Land and assets were awarded by the government. It didn’t matter whose child you were. Everyone got a minimum when they came of age, and then sometimes more depending on their occupation. Food producers, for instance, got more land than city dwellers and they also got agricultural equipment. Scientists got properties where they could work at home safely. Family heirlooms were gifted to children by their parents but not land. A child who took up one of his parents’ professions could with permission from the government take over the land associated with that parent’s profession when that parent died, provided he gave up what the government had allotted him when he came of age.

And once children stopped being produced by sexual reproduction, sexual fidelity as we think of it on Earth ceased to be of any importance to the family unit. It became just another a role that could be filled by a spouse or by anyone else with no value judgment attached. Virginity was also not elevated to the status it has here because there were other ways to prove who was whose son or daughter and anyway provenance didn’t entitle anyone to land on the death of their parents.”

“It boggles my mind.” Lena leaned back and stared at the ceiling as she tried to visualize a society like that.

“I know, right?! But of course I was only thirteen when I left.” Kara’s brightness dimmed a little.

“What does that mean for you?” Lena asked gently, rolling her head round to look at her.

“Well, you don’t think so much about stuff like sex and sociology when you’re thirteen. I mean, I’d learned Kryptonian biology and the theory of sexual and asexual reproduction and matrix basics by that time but not even Kryptonian parents would teach a thirteen year old about the _practice_ of sex, or the preludes to it, no matter how advanced the kid was!”

Lena chuckled softly.

“So ... um ... yeah,” Kara continued more shyly. “On Krypton sex was regarded as an exploration into physical ways of expressing affection and respect and trust by one adult to another. It was never romanticised or idealized as being capable of some form of spiritual communion. We’d never have abandoned it so completely as a method of reproduction if it could at times have had a touch of the sacred about it. Kal was a natural birth and it was _such_ a scandal! I don’t even know what penalty was exacted on his parents. Mine wouldn’t tell me. Licentiousness was frowned upon because it was immoderate and demonstrated a lack of self-discipline, not as an evil in itself. So we had a large proportion of adults, single or married, who were pretty ascetic and avoided sex and a few who had a single sexual partner at a time within or outside the spousal bond and the disapproved-of _very_ few who had a _lot_ of sex with multiple partners. Then I came here and got really, really confused!”

Lena shook her head at the thought of Kara coming from a society of largely utilitarian ascetic stoics to Earth. “Did you ever resolve that confusion?”

Kara sighed. “You know, I’ve never really discussed this with anyone else. Eliza and Alex were insistent that I shouldn’t bring attention to myself, and my socialization for adult behaviour and attitudes occurred here. And you know Alex and I can be ...” she giggled, “... a bit puritan about talking about these things out loud. Plus I was breaking noses of boys I tried to kiss and altogether it was way too dangerous, physically and socially, to experiment the way it would have been acceptable for me to do on Krypton after puberty – if I’d been at all interested in that kind of thing. So I accepted the Earth mentality on this. It would’ve been too hard to blend in if I didn’t. The Danvers certainly didn’t follow the free love way of life and I supposed I just absorbed that.”

She went quiet.

“And how does this lead us to Mon-El?” Lena’s inquiry was very soft indeed.

Kara sighed again. “Well, after college I crushed hard on James first but before we got very far, it was clear to me that there was no spark. I’d unconsciously restricted my dating pool to those who knew about me because I’d never met anyone that attracted me soooo much that I would abandon all safety concerns. Kal was so little in my life that I _completely_ failed to bear in mind that he had fallen in love with someone who _didn’t_ know his secret - though of course _he_ never had the DEO on his back, just cow sense and survival instinct. Plus there were all the physical dangers. Mon-El was the first person I _could_ experiment with safely but, well, I was still working up to it when he left ...”

Lena frowned at the implications of that but kept quiet.

“ ... I _was_ curious, of course. If Mon-El had stayed longer, a lot longer, I guess I might eventually have got round to it, but it didn’t feel right to jump right in just because he was the only one who fit on paper. It felt disrespectful to both of us to treat him like the only available lab rat even if he would have agreed to it. And it took a long time to feel the personal respect for him that I thought was necessary to even start. I called it love because, well, remember I was still really young and bit sheltered about this sort of thing in practice and I’d experienced more confusion and apprehension over sex and relationships than most. Looking back, I can say now that I felt affection for him and responsibility for his conduct and well-being and we could commiserate with each other over the fate of our planets, but that’s not really enough for more than friendship, is it? In retrospect, I was also being unknowingly contrary coming from a history with matrix matching, I guess, because really, how likely could it have been that the _one_ person fate seemed to have given me as a physical possibility was compatible with me?”

“I don’t know,” Lena said. “I didn’t really get to know him well. Huh. So the dating was ... ?”

“Just kissing, a little touching that was ... um ... progressing slowly. He was surprisingly nice about that and didn’t push, though he wouldn’t have succeeded if he’d _tried_ pushing.” Kara looked at her hands. “Anyway, I came the closest with him.”

After a pause, Lena offered, “I’m so sorry, Kara. You don’t deserve to have it so hard ... How does your cousin overcome the physical constraints with his partner?”

Kara grinned. “Very carefully.”

She got the same cushion thrown back at her face and laughed. “Okay, okay. I imagine he couldn’t really lose himself, you know? I expect he could have hovered a bit when he was on top or he could have been more passive and let her lead from the top. The DEO sent him a red sun lamp so they must be really happy now, but he and I don’t talk about these things. And it’s different for me because I’m female and well, let’s just say that the more-than-human strength of _his_ inner involuntary muscles isn’t quite so dangerous.” She couldn’t help blushing and giggling. “Although I have to wonder about the strength of his ... um ... involuntary... I guess he’d’ve had to pull out before ...” she began to gurgle from trying to hold in the full force of her laughter as she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Quite,” Lena said with faux prissiness. She held it for all of five seconds then started spluttering. “I’m sorry!” she gasped, covering her mouth. “This is a terrible problem for you both. It isn’t funny at all!”

Kara couldn’t stop giggling. “Nah, it really is.”

They dissolved into abandoned laughter together like naughty schoolgirls.

“Anyway,” Kara went on after she had calmed, “I really don’t know how little Jon was conceived and I _really_ don’t wanna ask, but since it was before the red sun lamp I figure a syringe had to have been involved somewhere.”

Lena looked at her. “Well, there are other ways of achieving ... pleasure, you know. Non-penetrative ways. Or artificial aids, made of Nth metal if necessary. Haven’t you considered those?” She was pink, although whether it was from the laughter or something else was impossible to say.

Kara turned to look at her so seriously and intently all of a sudden that it gave Lena a jolt and the shock of it brought more heat to her cheeks. “After Mon-El, yes. And now there are the filters as well as the red sun lamp.”

Lena gulped. She hadn’t thought of that yet. “Still adjusting ...” she reminded. “What’s become of the Epi-pen idea, by the way?”

“Alex is working on it. Turns out I don’t need to solar flare for an Nth metal needle to penetrate. Something like a 30% loss of power is enough. She’s mentioned wanting your help with the injector contents. Has she emailed you about that?”

“Not that I’ve seen, but why is it so hard? It would be just like injecting a barium compound for the way medical analyses are done now. She just needs to find the right range of radioactive particles to add to the injection fluid. It doesn’t have to represent the entire range of solar radiation. It’s not a substitute for exposing you to sunlight. It just has to have enough punch to act as a pick-me-up that gets you out of trouble. Trying to duplicate the sun in an Epi-pen is unnecessary and probably close to impossible even with the grenade technology. There’s no ignition spark in an Epi-pen, which is the whole point: to avoid irradiating the surrounding area.”

Kara’s eyes went round. Lena rolled her eyes and called Alex. They had a short but animated conversation.

“She’ll have one for you to try when you get home,” Lena announced after hanging up.

“Great!” Kara began to feel shy again. “So ... um ... I told you the whole long story for several reasons. First, so you’d understand what you’d be getting into. Second, so you’d know why I can sometimes be a bit weird but also be assured that I grew up fully immersed in Earth norms: I’m not gonna be picking and choosing things from Kryptonian society to suit, is what I mean. And third, for you to see that although I was in fact with Mon-El at the time you were talking about, I wasn’t ... exactly ... convinced about him. There were a number of things about him that I found … trying. The real point is, though, is that when you say I wasn't predisposed to pick up on your signals, I wasn’t _looking_ because I thought I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to be faithful and I thought I was supposed to only take seriously interest shown by those who knew both sides of me.”

“You were upset for quite a while after he left,” Lena recalled.

“I genuinely missed him. I thought I loved him and ... you know how it is when someone is around a lot and then isn’t anymore? You miss them.”

Lena was usually _glad_ when most people who hung around her for her name, her wealth or her power suddenly weren’t around anymore, but she preserved a diplomatic silence. Besides, in these last months what Kara said _was_ becoming true: her life had more people in it she probably _would_ miss if they disappeared. She would, she realised, certainly miss Kara if _she_ disappeared; miss her more badly than she could possibly have anticipated a year ago.

“But then,” Kara went on, “there was you.”

Lena blinked at the segue.

“It crept up on me,” Kara reminisced fondly. “I mean, god, you’re literally the _best_ friend anyone could have – if they’re not interested in murder and world domination, that is.”

Lena smiled. She was also flattered, but ... “I don’t know. I think people tend to prefer brighter, more positive friends.”

Kara snorted inelegantly. “Anyone can put on a bright and positive front if they put effort into it. You might have been guarded for a long time and who can blame you? But whatever you showed me was real. You made helpful suggestions, you provided solutions and you listened even when you disagreed. And when you helped, you did nothing bad, nothing _I_ had to feel bad about. I know it's been said that you bought Catco because it meant so much to me, but if it had been a sleazy tabloid rag you wouldn’t have, would you?”

Lena shrugged. “I don’t deny that preserving independent and unbiased reporting was important to me. A sleazy rag wouldn’t have given me that motivation and I doubt you’d have had a personal crisis over losing it. I had an interest in keeping Morgan Edge’s filthy mitts off Catco, and as a business it was very profitable at the time. Your unhappiness and need created in me the urge to _consider_ the option of buying it, which I wouldn’t have otherwise. The final decision was about the bottom line and the principle of the thing. But then usually an acquisition of that magnitude only takes place after weeks of due diligence by lawyers and accountants to make sure there aren’t any hidden liabilities. I took an expensive risk in buying without full due diligence but it was a calculated risk. I gambled that Cat Grant was too smart to have a black hole of debt and that the audited accounts were reliable. And ...” here she smiled her shark smile, “I made a hell of a profit selling it despite James not being the best of CEOs. So it was a good decision as businessmen count it.”

“See? You help but you don’t throw away the principles you live by to do it. I’m not in business. I don’t have a whole host of employees and contractors and shareholders depending on me to put food on their tables and keep a roof over their heads, or consumers relying on my inventions to make their life better. So your principles may not be _my_ principles but they are still good ones.”

Lena tilted her head. “At the risk of killing the mood, where was _this_ attitude with Sam as Reign and synthetic kryptonite? And with trying to get me to reveal all research that could harm you when I couldn’t have known what you would think might?” But she said this without heat, in a tone that was merely curious.

“Buried under paranoid idiocy,” Kara replied frankly. “Kryptonite and the possession thereof tends to be personal to Kal and me because we’re the only ones harmed by it. It can be stolen from whoever’s in possession of it. He or she can be blackmailed into giving it up if someone has the right leverage. In your case, they could just have targeted a hospital or an orphanage or anywhere with people. And remember, I finally acknowledged that I reacted very poorly. I’m wiser now. Not in the market for sycophants, right? And I believe I apologized but in case it was lost in the general apologies, I do apologize for it specifically now and for being literally two-faced about it when you didn’t know I was Kara Danvers.”

“Yes,” Lena said. “Please stop apologizing. I understand and accept your point. Mine was that we need some kryptonite now and again to be able test what works against it. And even you can’t deny that you’ve been out of control before through circumstances that were not your fault. The worst I might ever have intended was to subdue, not to injure and certainly not to kill, and the subduing would then only have been when exigency absolutely demanded it. But right now, I would just like to understand how you could have _been_ so two-faced. It’s so ... unlike you.”

“I was frightened but I loved you.”´ Kara sighed. “We can go round and round the houses but it will always come back to that. I know it doesn’t make sense but does it have to? This was scatty me back then. I did a lot of things that didn’t make sense and those things weren’t limited to you. There was the whole AI thing and the whole allegiance to the DEO thing.”

Lena gave a soft, thoughtful snuffle but she didn’t say any more on that subject and seemed content to leave it there.

After a while, Kara ventured, “Is it safe to go on?”

“Hmmm? Oh. Yes, do.” Lena came back to full attention.

“Lena, you are just a wonderful person, okay? I know you may have difficulty with that idea but it’s how I see you. The day that Morgan Edge went on TV about the children poisoned with lead? You were so fragile and yet _so_ brave and _so_ dignified and sensible of the proper things to do, even in the face of utter personal and professional despair. I’ve never seen anything like it! Alex and I have physical courage, sure, but none of us has ever had the whole world against us and yet had to hold our heads up and speak in public and decide on the right thing to do at a moment’s notice and then do it, all with hardly any preparation time. You’ve had to do it over and over again and you just keep going like your store of moral courage is endless. And that day you were ... my god, you were magnificent! How could anyone, knowing you as I did, _not_ love and admire the heck out of you? If I hadn’t loved you before, I would have known with absolute certainty that I did that day. I was, like, RAO ... WWRRRR!!! ...”

Startled by the sudden loud exclamation, Lena jumped a little. Her eyes widened and she hiccupped a little giggle as she pinked up almost violently.

“ ... And _this_ was after everything with Lex’s and your mother’s attacks _and_ the Daxamites. I would have _died_ for you. I still would.”

“Oh, I _beg_ that you do _not_!” Lena returned dryly. 

“Lena.”

“I just think you haven’t seen me at my worst,” Lena shrugged. “No, wait ... I suppose you have. I was pretty far gone with Edge. But that low part of me doesn’t go away. I just tend to keep it mostly to myself. And people _do_ tend to drive me to the ... um ... edge a lot, no pun intended.”

“But I _want_ to be there, Lena. To help, to comfort, to listen. To hide away the last third of the bottle and hustle you to sleep and give you Advil and water in the morning,” Kara pleaded earnestly. “When you have nothing left to give, I want to be there to give to _you_.”

Lena looked down awkwardly, fiddling with her fingers in some anxiety. “Look, I _do_ like you, very very much. Including in _that_ way. Just ... let me get my head around it, please? At the time I considered it, we weren’t quite friends yet. I really intended a sort of amicable hooking up that might repeat itself. That was all. I envisaged that we’d be kind to each other, but that ultimately it would have been more of a physical than an emotional thing, only with a comfortable companion for the duration. Jack Spheer wasn’t that far behind me. I wasn’t ready for more than something simple that wouldn’t crash and burn destructively for anyone. And of course I believed you were human and therefore not quite as often in danger as you actually are. We’ve come a long way since then and this is a _much_ more serious idea altogether. I don’t want us both to end up miserable. I couldn’t do that to either of us. I want to make the right decision. Just ... I need time.”

Kara had no choice but to agree of course. But it could have been worse. She’d had visions of Lena refusing outright with an expression of politely concealed disgust. So she remained hopeful.

...

For Lena, this evening had been one of almost too many revelations. Hours after she had retired and Kara had flown home to National City, her mind was still fluttering from one new concept to another. She had had an inkling from Kara's dopily fond staring that something like this was in the works, but she'd only recently got to the point that she could receive those stares and not feel weird about it. Before she finally fell asleep she wrote to the ever-faithful, ever-efficient Jess to tell her she was taking the next day off and had emailed her therapist to schedule an ad hoc session.

...

Kara could have kicked herself. When she had first met Lena as mousy, unambitious, struggling and indecisive little Kara Danvers, not only had she identified with Lena’s goals, she had also been grateful for the innate generosity with which Lena had drawn her into a full share of the conversation under cover of a sardonic comment, which was more than Clark had done. She liked the confidence Lena exuded, the way she knew exactly what she wanted to do and ploughed ahead, damning all the torpedoes sent her way, often with countermeasures to boot. Best of all, unlike Cat Grant, who Kara had also wanted to impress, Lena was a _contemporary_. 

So without quite articulating why, she liked and wanted to get to know Lena better and better. Other people might have called it a crush. She had pushed for friendship when Lena had at first been content with professional goodwill and cooperation. And with every new thing she learned about Lena she liked her more and more. She admired the impeccable polished public front Lena presented to the world. With everything that Lena suffered, with every victory she won, Kara’s admiration grew boundless. But Kara’s life then had been so busy with her job, orientating Mon-El and being a friend and then more to him, the superheroing gig, worrying about Jeremiah, and Alex’s burgeoning self-awareness and relationship with Maggie, she had been pulled in so many different directions at once that she hadn’t just sat down to figure out what she was feeling for Lena. She hadn't known that she should.

When she yearned for and treasured the glimpses she was given of the softer, more vulnerable side of Lena, other people might have said she was moving beyond a crush. But then no one else had known because Kara hadn’t talked about it even to herself. In retrospect now, Kara could not say exactly when she had come to find Lena indispensable. It certainly came to her too late that the world, even her precious Alex, could go hang if Lena was at stake. It was not something she liked to think of or admit out loud, but deep in the recesses of her consciousness, she _knew_ it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone has a favourite trope about Krypton I've just pounded on, please remember that writing about it is, after all, science FICTION. A trope is a trope and is not fact, and it is a lot of fun to stretch the imagination within the bounds of discipline - like logic.
> 
> I am very grateful for all the encouragement and thoughtful comments this story has received. Many of you will have realised that, with a proper accounting of everything wrong that canon has done to Lena's character, the clawback was always going to be a challenge to write without a resolution that was specious, unrealistic and therefore unsatisfying. So it is taking a bit more time because the story really only started as Chapters 1 and 2. Thank you for your patience.


	10. The (Anti)Hero In Spite of Herself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this update was way behind schedule. Apologies. The flow was sludge for so many re-workings that I had to leave it for a while to come back with fresh eyes.
> 
> The reason why I find Non Nocere ridiculous is that the comprehensive use of it would deprive the entire Earth population of the ability to defend itself against, say, alien invasion. The idea that anyone who remembers the Daxamite invasion of Earth-38 would countenance that is absurd.

**Chapter 12**

Lena went through her morning emails and phone messages sorting out things that were urgent and things that were important. After a long call with her finance managers and several shorter calls to stamp out forest fires with her COO China and Vice-CFO India, she settled down to review reports from various investigators about the attack in Shanghai. Conclusion: it had been funded by a cabal of shipping and transport magnates who had heard enough about the transmatter portal to decide that its introduction to the world would put them out of business. Options? She could send the information to Interpol and to law enforcement agencies in the countries where these individuals resided. It would take months, more likely years, before admissible evidence conforming to the evidential laws in each jurisdiction was amassed and there was no telling how many law enforcement officers each of them had bribed. The orthodox legal method would end up either with her dead or other people injured or dead, most likely L-Corp employees and her security detail, long before meaningful action was taken. Lena’s lips thinned as she pushed away the remains of the salad Jess had procured for her lunch. Unacceptable. An alternative plan was required. She stared into the middle distance for several minutes.

“Jess, I need you to block out an hour for me to speak with the Heads of Legal, PR and Transport Development as soon as possible, please. Today.”

Pause. It was a tall order with the time difference. Head Legal worked out of the corporate secretarial seat and Head PR was in India. Only the Head of Transport Development was in Geneva with her.

“Miss Luthor, according to their calendars, they aren’t jointly available before 7pm our time. That will already be past 11pm Mumbai time.”

“Get in touch with them, Jess. Tell them it’s imperative we video-conference today. See what you can work out with them. Thank you.”

Down in the lab, Lena began working on a modified geothermal rod. The top part of her mind comfortably occupied with science and engineering, she allowed the rest to fuss about Kara.

If the small half-uncurled thing inside her had, when Kara began speaking last night, reflexively scrunched up and screamed ‘ _No way in Hell, not HER!_ ’, Lena would have told Kara no, or at least not yet. 

But it had not. Even her subconscious now recognized that Kara today was not the Kara of yesteryear.

Shorn of panic, she was free to fret about other things than unrepaired damage.

One early incidental lesson in therapy was to distinguish gratitude from love. Yes, genius that she was, it took her more than a quarter of a century to learn that simple truth. Once learned, it changed her narrative fundamentally. Lena was _grateful_ that the Luthors had made sure she never wanted for anything material, had given her an education and resources most other people couldn’t have. She had sought Lex and Lillian’s validation because she had no one else from whom to seek it and it is a natural thing that young humans do, rely on the elders in their lives to show them the way forward. But Lena had not loved Lillian since she had been old enough to see the emptiness behind Lillian’s eyes. She had feared her, and she had felt to some extent she owed her. Lena _had_ loved Lex and continued to do so even after he had tipped over the edge because the memories of things that fuel love don’t just disappear overnight. She had hoped he would change back into what he had been before – until the first time she realized that he had tried to kill her. After that she had stopped loving anything about him other the memories. There is only so far gratitude takes you; without love how far can loyalty extend?

But the fact that gratitude is not love remained true for other situations. For all the times that Kara had saved her life, for all the support that Kara had provided her, Lena was _grateful_ , immensely so. The trouble was, that was still not love, it just created positivity that made love possible. And if Lena had learned nothing else from Lex and Lillian, it was this: gratitude also didn't _guarantee_ love as a necessary consequence.

Her mother’s DNA had protected her from the predisposition towards sociopathy Lillian seemed to have passed down to Lex, but there was only so much nature could do. Even the halcyon days of her relationship with Jack Spheer, when she’d been free of the burden of responsibility to anyone but herself and him, had not been enough to supplant the unyielding focus and rationality forged in the hearth of the Luthor household. She thought she had loved him wholeheartedly, yet when the time came for their paths to part, she had let him go. James had been even easier to let go because she had never got to the point of ‘wholehearted’ with him.

On top of the Luthor legacy, Lena had been a CEO for years now, fully aware of just how many people’s lives and futures depended on her. She would _always_ be more sense than sensibility. She didn’t know how not to be.

Her hands went still as she put down her soldering iron. Kara was the noblest, bravest, kindest and most compassionate soul she knew. For heaven’s sake, with her powers, Kara could have made diamonds out of coal with her hands and spent her days in idle luxury instead of risking her life and working hard at her reporting career. But Kara was also a sweetheart, a softy, a complete mushball, and someone who tried to please everyone she cared for and wanted in her life.

Lena was the antithesis of a mushball. She had spent her childhood not pleasing Lillian. She grew out of her teens not pleasing Lex. Taking over the family business, she had displeased those with loyalties to those two. And nowadays she routinely displeased many people who sent L-Corp substandard merchandise, or employees dismissed for cause or suppliers who failed to submit the best tender offers. Basically her life consisted of doing things that pissed off someone or other and still being able to sleep well at night.

Was Lena Luthor truly capable of the love Kara wanted and deserved?

And God, they had yet to talk about sex! The hair on the back of Lena’s neck stirred. Kara’s famous squeamishness on the subject was just one reason why their girl talk had never been concerned with it. Lena wasn’t as easily embarrassed by it as Kara but it wasn’t exactly a conversation topic of choice for her either.

But given that Kara could very easily injure or kill her by accident if they tried anything when she had her powers, they did have to talk about it. For one thing, Lena wasn’t about to pass all the burden of responsibility on to Kara with a romantic sounding but practically unhelpful ‘I trust you’. For another, she valued herself too much to go in blindly. Not for _any_ sex in the world was it worth ending up with her womb torn out or paralyzed or dead, and Kara would never recover from the damage it would do to her mind if that happened.

And all _that_ was before they ever got to the minefield of Kara’s inexperience. It wasn’t so much the physical fact of technical virginity. Lena was way too unsentimental to pretend that she bought into the whole ‘your first time should be special’ ideal and she wouldn’t lie to Kara that she was. Building up anyone’s expectations only for them to be hugely disillusioned and disappointed seemed to her to be cruel, not romantic. The important point was that Kara should have an experience that would not weigh her down with negative impressions of sex ...

“Miss Luthor? You have half an hour before the video-conference.”

Startled by Jess’s voice over the intercom, Lena shook herself out of her reverie. There was just time to pack up here, have a quick refresher in the bathroom and settle down in front of her monitor upstairs with a cup of coffee and her meeting agenda and aide-memoires.

They were about three quarters of the way through the conference when a tumult broke out outside the room her Head Legal was in. Almost immediately after that, Jess ran into Lena’s office, looking harried in such an unaccustomed way that Lena immediately broke off. Jess had been supposed to leave for the day when the video conference began. If she had come all the way back ...

“President Marsdin’s been kidnapped.”

It was 7.30pm in Geneva, 2.30pm in Washington DC and 11.30am in National City. The video conference came to an abrupt end.

...

Two nights later, Lena found herself on home soil, sitting in her re-fueling jet with her tablet in hand and her blackjack/crossbow on her hip.

It had been Lillian all along. She had captured the President to use as bait. What the public knew was that a message had been broadcast demanding that Supergirl turn herself over to Cadmus in exchange for the President. Cadmus no longer existed after Lillian’s first arrest so it seemed to Lena like a scaremongering tactic to use the name and it confirmed Lillian’s involvement in her mind. She didn’t know it was also an implicit threat to those in the know that they risked finding a President who wasn’t just dead but dissected. It wasn’t clear to Kara or Cat Grant at that point whether Lillian knew that Olivia Marsdin was an alien.

As soon as she had seen the broadcast, Lena was up and gathering the people and equipment she needed, furious and terrified but unprotesting about Supergirl’s inevitable decision to agree to Lillian’s demand. Kara was noble enough to done so in any event but with the eyes of the public on her, there was really no option if she was not to be vilified for cowardice. And as any sensible alien would have been, Kara had been terrified too.

Lillian had given very little time for the handover, no doubt to prevent anyone from coming up with a foolproof plan to defeat her.

Through the ear studs, Lena had watched and listened on her tablet as the DEO inserted a tracker into one of Kara’s boot heels and Alex allowed Kara to swallow a tiny audio device made of Nth metal - not the best option given that it had to contend with the internal noises of Kara’s bodily functions, but better than nothing. They had to expect that Kara would be stripped of extraneous equipment as soon as she was in Lillian’s custody.

The exchange had taken place on the roof of what had been the Catco tower in National City. Airspace had been cleared on Lillian’s demand. She had sent a stealth helicopter. The President’s unconscious but apparently unharmed body had been lowered on one line, and Kara had been required to cuff herself with kryptonite-infused handcuffs to another. As Secret Service agents ran to recover the President, the helicopter had taken off while the line holding Kara was still being drawn up.

As soon as she was inside she had been searched and the ear studs and DEO communicator had been smashed. Shortly before landing at a private airfield outside National City, Lena had seen her tablet screen go blank after unpleasant hands had searched Kara and roiling worry began to eat at her. But the ruse, and only Kara and Lena knew it was a ruse because the DEO didn’t know about the ear stud extras, had worked. Lillian’s men didn’t think to find the DEO tracker in her bootheel, and Lena had had no trouble hacking into the signal.

She gave a quiet snarl of grim satisfaction. She had suspected that Lillian had limited resources compared to her Cadmus days. She would have less manpower, and what manpower she would have would not be the best. The best would have found that tracker. Before the ear studs were destroyed, Lena had had a close up view of Kara’s handcuffs. They weren’t giving off a strong enough kryptonite signature for the DEO to track because they were coated in lead. So only the strip next to Kara’s skin must have some sort of kryptonite-infused alloy. Lillian was strategic as always, but her help was letting her down.

What no one knew was that Lena had the miniature teleportation device from Lex’s warsuit. As soon as the tracker signal steadied on a single location, she was looking at satellite maps of the area. Once she had figured out where to teleport to that wouldn’t result in her ending up in solid rock, Lena programmed the device and took a pod of her security team there one by one, each of them clinging to her tightly to stay within the narrow effective range of the device. The DEO would be on the way but they were a long time behind her.

Once at the rally point, Lena had to wait, chafing. The first two of the team she had transported over were scouting. It took a full half hour before they reported back. Lillian could do a LOT of damage to a helpless captive in that time.

In the event it was worth the wait. The scouts had discovered some kind of automated medium-range artillery defences that normal military hadn’t seen before. They had also marked entry points and sentries. Lena left the breach planning to the professionals while she texted Alex, who was probably on a helicopter right now, to warn her that Lillian had artillery that could take out anything on ground or air approach.

One of her team sneaked off to disable any escape vehicles he could find. The remaining three briefed her on the plan. The primary mission goal Lena had set was locating and securing Supergirl as quickly as possible and then establishing a temporary defensible position. Even with straitened means, Lillian had considerably more the four men Lena had. Lena and her team could hardly expect to wipe them out. But at some point, the attention of Lillian’s small force would have to be divided to deal with the DEO. And all Lena needed was time to teleport Supergirl to the DEO (if the condition they found the superhero in made it necessary) and then come back to join her guys in trying to take down the cannons.

Lena switched off her phone, stuck an earphone in one ear and plugged it into her tablet. She turned on the signal for the audio device Kara had swallowed, which she had of course already hacked into.

Gurgling from Kara’s body filled her ears as she and her three remaining men made their way forward from their rally point.

Faintly there came the sound of Lillian’s distant voice and Lena clenched her jaw. It would do no good to hurry. Raising an alarm was something they wanted to delay for as long as possible.

Her team crept on. Sentries were quietly rendered unconscious and the chosen entry point was breached, Lena disabling the alarm. They waited for their engine saboteur to show up.

“Well, well, well …” Lillian’s voice was clearer now. “Clever little reporter.”

The roiling worry became a stone cold lump in Lena’s stomach. Kara had told her that Lillian knew her civilian identity but this confirmation and Lillian’s ability to make broadcasts cemented Lena’s determination. She didn’t know why Lillian hadn’t outed Kara publicly yet and she wasn’t interested in the reason. The fact that Lillian could was enough. Relying on her not to screw up their lives was a recipe for living in fear.

The last member of their team came up, wiping his hand free of engine grease, and they started penetrating Lillian’s stronghold silently. Her team had guns but in the first instance they were using tranq darts. It was partly because they didn’t want to kill, but mainly because with no gunpowder, the dart guns were quiet.

“I told you,” Lillian’s arctic voice went on, “to stay away from my daughter.” Lena made a mental note to investigate how Lillian might have mounted effective surveillance on her in her new locations.

“Bug off.” Kara’s voice was weak but the defiance was there. With more European and British colleagues around her, Lena had reverted to British imprecations on the phone in Kara’s hearing, but once the meaning of ‘bugger’ had been explained to her, Kara wasn't quite been able to say that one correctly.

“You know,” Lillian said in the contemplative tone that was one of the first things Lena had learned to dread about her, “I think you need to be reminded not to do just as you please.”

The red pulsing point marking Kara’s boot on the tablet in Lena’s hands was very close. She made a note that her team was performing excellently. In fact they seemed to be enjoying themselves. They had already silently incapacitated and tied up two more of Lillian’s men on their passage through the dark corridors.

“I wonder,” Lillian said, still that eerily awful tone, “how that suit comes off. I think between Theodore, Andy and Ari here, they’ll manage it somehow.”

Lena very nearly cursed out loud. She imagined Alex listening to this with desperate horror.

“Don’t you dare!” Kara’s voice was still defiant but there was an underlying note Lena could identify all too well. Masked terror. She was all too familiar with it in herself.

They were right outside the room and there was no time. Lena halted her team and made the signs for ‘at least 4 hostiles’. They all nodded. She let them breach without her. Action hero she was not, not unless forced to it, and these four trained to work seamlessly together – she would only get in their way. Besides, someone had to keep temporary watch outside the room.

The scuffle was short. Poor quality recruits indeed. That Lillian should have dared to subject Kara to the tender mercies of these nauseating toerags made Lena want to hurl.

Like the weasel she was, Lillian slipped out of the room. And came face to face with Lena. Lena didn’t bother to bandy words. She’d had enough of Lillian, whose words were always poisoned even when true. Especially when true. With her blackjack, she coldcocked Lillian on the forehead with the full force of her rage and pent up fear for Kara, hearing and feeling something in Lillian’s head give under the Nth metal. Lillian fell like a tree.

Without remorse, Lena dragged the heavy body to one side. She didn’t care to check for a pulse. Whether she was brain damaged or dead, Lillian wouldn’t be getting up again for another escape attempt.

Inside the room, two of her team were already securing Lillian’s men with zip ties and the other two were freeing Kara when Lena came up. She reached into Kara’s right boot, found the single Epi-pen Alex had rushed to finish and injected it while her teams set up shooting positions aimed at the door.

Kara’s eyes were cloudy from pain but the cuffs were gone. She looked at Lena with relief but Lena could see receding horror behind that look.

“Hey,” Lena smiled, made it seem natural and reassuring. “Time to stop lazing around.”

The Epi-pen was impressively fast-acting. The cuts and bruises on Kara, what looked horribly like a broken jaw, and the green tinge to her skin were already giving way to whole and healthy bone and tissue.

“Took you long enough,” Kara coughed weakly.

“Did they give you anything to put you in this state?” Lena got an arm around Kara’s back, under her armpits, and heaved. Kara helped a little but she was worryingly unsteady.

Kara shook her head. “Kryptonite. Cuffs. They roughed me up a bit.”

Lena switched her phone on. “Alex, it’s Lena. I’ve got Kara and she looks in reasonable shape. Talk to her but not too long. She has a broken jaw. I need to get her back to the DEO to be looked at as soon as possible.” She passed the phone to Kara and a short excited sisterly gabble ensued. For the first time that day, Lena relaxed.

She teleported Kara to the DEO. It was the first time she had been there for a year. Once Kara was settled on a bed and a doctor was examining her, Lena stepped out and called Alex.

“Yeah, no need for you to come back. We had very little trouble. Brainy managed to stop the cannons. Lillian’s dead,” Alex reported laconically. “She’s the only casualty.”

Lena went still. “She left the room when my guys engaged hers. Found me outside.” She wasn’t up to her usual eloquence. Her surroundings were making her squirrely. She was half-expecting to be intimidated into giving up the teleportation device.

A pause.

Alex said carefully, “I imagine she barrelled right out into you and you had no time to react so you just hit her anywhere you could in a panic. It was either accident or self-defence.”

Another pause.

“Something very like that,” Lena said without a quiver. She was not going to break down here.

“I’ll write the report,” Alex said. “Don’t worry about it. I would have torn her arm off and beat her to death with it.”

Silence.

“Sorry,” Alex said awkwardly. “I forgot she was your mo ...”

“Never mind,” Lena interrupted. “She was nothing of the sort, really.”

“It’s still a loss, Lena,” Alex said. “I’m sorry for whatever confusion or grief you’re feeling. I’m sorry that no one you grew up is with you now. But I will be. And Kara’s gonna be fine in a little while. I can’t thank you enough for getting there before ... before ...” She couldn’t go on.

“If I hadn’t, I’d have torn Lillian’s arm off myself,” Lena grated out. “I’ll see you soon. Can you give my guys a life back?”

“Yeah, we’ll be with the first truck coming back with prisoners. Hang tight, Lena.”

...

Two hours later, Alex walked into Kara’s room and found her sister awake. Lena was dozing in a weird position in a chair, her jacket still on, her forearms folded protectively over the tablet clutched to her stomach. Alex wondered if whatever tech Lena had used to get herself to and from Lillian’s base was on that tablet.

“Hey,” she whispered. She and Kara hugged each other in abundant relief and Alex perched on the bed.

In the chair, Lena stirred and, with her eyes still closed, said, “Lex!”.

The sisters froze and swiveled their eyes to her. She went still for a few seconds then made a fretful wriggle. “Not that stupid pink thing!” she moaned, a high girlish note of indignation to her voice that Kara had never heard before.

Both Danvers sisters collapsed a little and began to giggle quietly. In that moment Alex truly understood what it must have meant for Lena to have had a childhood with an irritating, teasing but ultimately normal big brother - hell, if _Alex_ had been confronted with wearing any stupid pink thing when she was a kid, that would have been major childhood trauma right there – and consequently, what it must have meant for her when he turned into a monster.

When Lena woke a few minutes later, she was debriefed. She had to explain that she had the ability to teleport but she refused to afford the DEO even a look at the device since it was her property. Alex had seen Lena like this before. She didn’t press. She was only required to furnish an explanation for Lena’s ability to get to Lillian so quickly and to transport Kara to the DEO. If the DEO wished to obtain such a device, it was up to them to negotiate separately for one and Lena was entitled to refuse even that.

...

Lena was back on the jet a couple of hours later with her team, while Kara remained under the DEO’s sunlamps for the few hours the flight of the jet would take. Lena occupied herself on the flight by resurrecting the aborted video-conference from two days before.

...

When Kara arrived in Geneva, she found Lena welcoming but a little stiff. After ten minutes and a few stupid puns, Lena was still not relaxing into their second hug.

Kara put her hands on Lena’s shoulders. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I killed Lillian.”

“I know. Alex said.”

“It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t self defence. I put her down like she was a rabid dog.”

“I ... don’t ... care,” Kara said with grave deliberation. “Alex doesn’t care. Actually Alex would have done worse. You did it because she was never going to change, never going to let up. On you or on me.”

Lena bit her lip. “That too.”

Kara waited.

“After what she was threatening to let her men do to you, I didn’t think you would ever feel safe if she were left alive. Just like I wasn’t able to feel safe in National City last year.” Lena winced. She didn’t intend any bitterness but she had to explain how she understood.

Kara looked pained and closed her eyes for a moment, but she didn’t falter. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I never thought I’d say anything like this about anyone but I’m relieved she’s gone. I’m just so sorry that it was necessary for _you_ to do it. Especially after Lex. And I’m sorry that you probably feel completely alone. But Lena, you’re not. You never will be while I’m alive. You are still the best person I know. Killing Lillian doesn’t change that. Not to me.”

Lena looked down and said dully, “Lillian was my responsibility. If she were placed in custody, she might have arranged for someone to reveal your identity to the public. If she had done that instead grabbing you, she'd still be alive and your life would be ruined. And she's been jailed before. She might have got out again. You heard her: she was conducting surveillance on me, enough to know you’ve been visiting.”

Kara nodded. “J’onn’s going to work on the memory of those three guys she had in the room with her. They won’t remember I’m a reporter. He’ll find out what he can to help shut down that surveillance.”

Lena crumpled softly onto her couch, buried her face in her hands and quietly shook.

Kara attempted to thank her again for the timely rescue but she only shook more so Kara wisely shut up about that for the moment. She only calmed when Kara asked to thank the team that gone with her on the rescue. Successfully distracted, she spent a little while telling Kara about them individually and arranging for Supergirl to meet with them again the next day.

Still, it took a long time before she was able to settle down that night. Kara was shaky too, from her close call. For the first time, they spent the night in one bed, huddling together for the reassurance until sleep took them.

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, we can all go burglarize our neighbours because amongst the many, many of them, maybe four were planning to shoot up a shopping mall, which somehow means we don’t have to bear the "burden of guilt" for doing ANY of them wrong. Instead we can just diminish premeditated burglary to a ‘mistake’ and Move Forward. Welcome to modern morals by Supergirl (2015). Mr All Powerful Imp couldn't have offered some other possibility, like spiriting Kara and Lena to somewhere outside time and space so they could yell it out? And let's not start on the abundance of legal fallacies in the trial scene - one would think the screenwriters could have consulted a litigation lawyer.


	11. A Tentative New Start

**Chapter 13**

Kara arrived back at the house in the mid-afternoon, just as Lena parked and got out.

She had had a great day so far. She had woken to a note from Lena telling her that the team who had rescued her were off rotation for the morning and that Lena would be finishing at work early herself. So Supergirl had gone to buy the team brunch.

As they were leaving to go on shift, they received word that L-Corp Special Security had orders to locate and take down whatever surveillance Lillian had put on Lena. Supergirl had gone on an airborne sweep using both supersight and x-ray vision but found nothing except the broken leg of a tripod on a distant deserted hillside, too far for any sniper’s rifle. If there had been surveillance from closer sites, whoever it was had packed up neatly and disappeared. Kara resolved to do a sweep from on high each time she came and left and to always come and go faster than human eyes could see.

L-Corp Special Security sent people to retrieve the evidence and examine the site. They had told her they could take it from there so when she spotted Lena’s car on the road home, she followed from above.

Any nervousness she was feeling evaporated when Lena opened the back door of the car and an utterly _adorable_ half grown Bernese Mountain Dog gamboled out, all big paws and fluffy tricolour fur.

Kara landed in a burst of primary coloured delight. “Lena! Who’s that?”

“This is Dodo.” Lena’s grin was unreserved. “I had to send Torvald, one of my senior marketing guys, on a sudden urgent trip and he emotionally blackmailed me into dogsitting for a couple of days.”

Kara looked skeptical.

“Okay,” Lena conceded. “The blackmail wouldn’t have been successful but I agreed anyway because it occurred to me that a couple of days of animal therapy wouldn’t hurt.”

Kara decided that this Torvald had to be one of the ‘more than casual professional acquaintances’ Lena had said she was gradually cultivating on her therapist’s recommendation. Only a relatively small proportion of L-Corp people came from the USA now. Lena seemed less worried that they might carry vestiges of the old Luthor influence. Where before she had never mentioned people she worked with to Kara, these days she would discuss little personal quirks about them. She was doing well if they felt comfortable enough to ask her to dogsit or to tease her with ‘emotional blackmail’.

“She’s gorgeous!” Kara cried, as she and the small animated hill of fur and slobber went into paroxysms of excitement greeting each other.

“She is,” Lena agreed. Dodo was now running back and forth between the two women, receiving plenty of rubbing and scratching from each.

They unloaded Dodo’s stuff from the trunk of the car and Kara did a superspeed change of clothes, then Lena went off to change while Kara play-wrestled her new friend.

“No bribing her with treats, please.” Lena re-emerged and caught her just in time as she was reaching for the bag of kibble.

“What! _Why_?”

Kara looked so outraged that Lena had to compress her lips for several seconds so as not to bray with laughter. “She’s been trained without food rewards and I don’t want us sabotaging that. It’s important.”

“Really? I didn’t know people did that!”

“Mhm. Working dogs are never trained with food. Can you imagine a seeing eye dog spying meat pies and dragging his human across a busy road to get to them? Or a drug sniffer scrabbling away at a bag containing beef jerky instead of cocaine? So I’m sorry to spoil your fun but Dodo is _not_ to be inducted into the 100 Ways to Feed Your Dog school of training.”

“Huh. Now you say that, I suppose it’s obvious. We’ll just cuddle.”

“Actually ..." Lena sighed. "... I really am going be a killjoy, aren’t I? Dogs don’t like being hugged, sweetie.”

“Oh, you have GOT to be kidding!”

“It’s true,” Lena said, staunch in her conviction. “Try it and see. They always look stressed or resigned when they’re hugged.” She was still suppressing laughter at Kara’s reaction to her various blasphemies.

Kara pouted outrageously but she was consoled when Lena instigated a nice long 3-player game of fetch with Dodo.

At last, Lena smiled down at the panting dog. “Looks like we’ve tired her out a bit. Let’s leave her to explore the back garden on her own for a while.” Playing in the sun and fresh air had done wonders for her nervousness, but now they had things to discuss and she didn’t want to be distracted, however wonderful the distraction might be.

...

Once Dodo’s water bowl was refilled and the back door was closed, Kara smiled at Lena. “Can I thank you again now?”

“Come on. Three times is enough surely ... oh god, not the hug attack ... not the ... ufff!”

Kara closed her eyes, feeling Lena soften in her arms and shake momentarily with a silent chuckle. So Kara was a superhero, so what? Even superheroes were allowed their own hero fantasies and Lena had been hers from the moment she had shot John Corben and saved Alex. And yesterday, when Kara had despaired that Alex would arrive in time and expected no other help, what was her relief to see the men around her turning away at the last second to confront fast-moving men in the navy blue that L-Corp Special Security wore when not on plainclothes duty? That relief had only been overtaken by the overwhelming sense of security that followed when Lena herself had entered that awful room.

She did a little right to left swaying and Lena went with it. Kara could feel her smiling against her cheek.

She finally drew back, locking her hands behind Lena’s waist.

“Thanks for saving me. You have no _idea_ how it felt for me when you guys came swooping in.”

Lena shook her head. “Oh, I think I do. I’ve felt the same when _you_ came swooping in for me. I hope you know I’d have done the same regardless of the state of our relationship. Hell, I’d have done the same if it had been J’onn or Alex or your cousin in your place. You _do_ know that, don’t you?”

“Of course you would. Only _you_ would have thought it was your responsibility.”

Lena made a dismissive noise then gave her a serious look. “But the _fear_ I felt from the moment I heard the broadcast asking for you to turn yourself over ... Kara, I was in utter terror! If nothing else, that told me how important you are to me. I _want_ to say yes. But I’m so afraid that it would be selfish, that it wouldn’t be the right thing for you in the long run. We have so much to sort out. Can we do that?”

Mutely, Kara nodded again, this time vigorously.

...

As it turned out, the logistical difficulties were easily dealt with.

Tired of a peripatetic existence, Lena had already appointed a COO China and was in the process of finalizing her choice for COO India. She intended to live mostly in Geneva, spending her mornings on corporate work and her afternoons in the Special Innovations labs, apart from half yearly week-long trips to China and India and maybe the wintriest months in Mumbai. So her life was becoming more stable and she could regularly take nights and weekends away from work.

Brainy and Dreamer were now capable of protecting National City full time if they had to. Between aliens becoming more spread out and natural and transport disasters, Supergirl was required across the globe more often than not, and the charity was now funded by a fair spread of international and domestic contributors. So Kara felt no guilt about spending half the week away from National City. From there to Geneva was only a half hour high altitude flight for her at cruising speed anyway, and if need be, she could fly faster.

Without spending hours on travelling, jet lag was not a serious problem. Kara simply ate herself into a food coma when she arrived late at night and promptly slept her fill, waking up the next day more or less in sync with everyone else. She accepted that Lena would never return to National City and was fully prepared to live wherever Lena decided to call home.

Finally, with trepidation, Lena voiced her deepest fear, that she didn’t have the capacity to love anyone the way Kara deserved to be loved.

Kara listened patiently to all the reasons she had that fear, all the events that seemed to indicate that her fear was justified, then said, “I’m prepared to take the risk. It’s a safe bet to me.”

Lena was bewildered by the simple and definite response. “How can you just ...?” 

But Kara held no fears. Lena’s vocabulary of love did not lie in her words. The Luthors had continually derided her for having gentler feelings; they had gloated over her various setbacks and attributed them to her having a heart. It wasn’t surprising that she was unwilling, perhaps even unable, to recognize those feelings, that heart. But anyone else could recognize them in the tones of her voice, the look in her eyes and in her actions above all. It was with her heart that she had won the war against her adoptive family. It was with her heart that she would win more wars against any other enemies or rivals. Since their reconciliation she had not failed to make Kara feel treasured, important, _vital_ to her and as fiercely defended as anything she owned or possessed. Kara was already addicted to the sense of safety and of being cared for being with Lena imparted to her.

_They had gone to a bar in Shanghai. Lena had excused herself to the restroom a few minutes before a Eurasian man with an all too suave manner had offered to buy Kara a drink. Kara said no, but as was all too common, the man chose to interpret the mildness of her refusal as an invitation to persist. Kara was beginning to be embarrassed. If the bar had been a dive and the situation had devolved, Kara would have been able to punch him discreetly, but it was a very posh bar since Lena had chosen it. He wasn’t touching her or being vulgarly obnoxious, so she couldn’t get physical. She couldn’t be crude herself, partly because it wasn’t in her, and partly because the surroundings inhibited that. Failing all that, she didn’t know what to say to persuade him to stop. It all added up to her feeling cornered._

_Just as she was getting desperate enough to plan surreptitious minor violence, Lena appeared at her shoulder and said sharply enough for her voice to carry several feet around but not further, “Hey! Didn’t you hear her? She said no!”, accompanying it with her patented ‘I might not wear stilettoes every day anymore but I still recall that I can pierce your balls with the ones I’m wearing right the fuck now’ stare._

_Faced with their solidarity and the possibility of a scene in those sophisticated surroundings, the man had backed off at once, to Kara’s great relief._

_Without being possessive or aggressive, Lena had simply stood up for a woman, whether single or not, having the right to say no without apology or explanation. It had been dignified for them both: Lena had barely raised her voice and Kara was not made to feel safe only by ‘belonging to’ someone else._

So no, Kara did not feel like an object. Lena guarded her dignity and self-respect as much as her person.

“I want you just as you are,” Kara said earnestly, holding Lena’s hands and her gaze. “If you treat me the way you normally do, I will have nothing to complain about. No one would. Stop worrying about putting a name to your feelings and just ... live. It’ll be fine.”

They were both strong-willed. They would piss each other off. But even when they argued they did not just talk _at_ each other, each one preparing her next speech instead of really listening to the other. An argument between them did not mean what it meant in common parlance: a repetition of opposing opinions at ever-increasing volume. Lena had of necessity started learning the art of persuasion years ago, the moment she had been confronted by a condescending, cautious, often skeptical and occasionally downright antagonistic Luthorcorp board. Kara naturally preferred persuasion to fighting. Therefore the arguments between them were literally that, statements of reasons for their differing view points. They argued _with_ each other. That was part of being fine as far as Kara was concerned.

Lena got dragged into many really weird desperate situations, but whenever _she_ got to decide what to do (and she had to do that a lot), she weighed the risks and played her cards so that at the critical juncture, she had probability on her side. Faith was a foreign concept, a definition parroted and intellectualized, not something _felt_.

Yet against her own expectations, against the most fundamental tenets of her decision-making processes, Lena was being drawn in by Kara’s steady faith. She couldn’t understand _how_ Kara could be so calmly accepting about this, but she could feel that calm seeping into her own pores as if by osmosis. Her worries began to retreat.

As she stood at the kitchen counter pouring them glasses of water, the relief from worrying put her in a piquant mood. Leaving the glasses and approaching Kara, who was leaning on the doorframe watching her, she let mischief surface.

“So. Treat you the way I normally do?” She lifted an inquiring eyebrow. “That’s all? Nothing more?”

Kara blinked very slowly. “Uh ...”

“Absolutely _nothing_ more?”

Kara blushed. “Er ... well ... now that you mention it ...”

She ducked her head, shy in the moment. Lena just waited. Kara liked that. She _despised_ it when anyone tried to make her look up by tilting her chin towards them. If she didn’t want to look at you, then she didn’t want to look at you, goddammit! What could make you think that she would then _like_ being _forced_ to look at you? Anyone who did that was ignoring what _she_ wanted and indulging their own wants and it really got her hackles up. So it was nice that Lena waited for her to be ready.

When she had gathered her courage again, she peeped up.

Lena had edged closer. She smiled a small but very soft smile, then leaned in slowly and moistened her lips.

Kara held her breath.

Lena stopped an inch from Kara’s mouth. Slowly, ever so slowly and carefully, Kara closed the distance with trembling anticipation.

At the first touch, Kara’s eyes slid shut. There was a second’s pause, then the contact became more definite. There was no puckering for distance. They were as close as they could possibly be. Lena’s lips and nose glided like satin against Kara’s own lips and chin and cheek, entrancingly free of interruption from stubble or beard skin. 

Lena’s lips parted against the seam of Kara’s and Kara took the hint and parted her own, allowing the tip of Lena’s tongue to search gently along the sensitive curve behind her upper teeth.

Kara’s brain went _oooooohhhh ..._ she could only respond blindly – until that tongue tip glided onto an extra-sensitive spot.

Knees of steel turned to knees of water. Abruptly Kara sank to the floor, her arms dragging a very surprised Lena down with her and breaking the kiss.

“Hahhh ...” Kara huffed out, then drew in a deep breath. Right, she had to remember that for next time. Noses were for breathing and breathing should continue.

Lena took in her unfocussed eyes and dopey smile. “Hmmm ... I’m getting that that wasn’t bad for you ... and yet we’re down here.”

“My knees gave out,” Kara said faintly. She took comfort from Lena’s thundering pulse only just now settling down, the flush of heat on her neck and her uneven breathing.

“I ... see. Well, I suppose there's no doubt anymore that we’re compatible in _this_ aspect.”

They smiled stupidly at each other.

“I wasn’t in doubt,” Kara said, her breath finally steadying. She leaned one shoulder against the wall. “You know, before I came here last time, I went to the Fortress of Solitude.”

Lena waited.

“I went to revise Kryptonian biology, just to be on the safe side. And it was a good thing I did because I found that I was only taught the basic and intermediate courses before I was sent here. Kryptonians are taught the final module only after they reach puberty because it requires maturity as well as intelligence.”

“Oh boy.”

Kara snorted. “You can say that again. I ran that final module of course. And then I REALLY wanted to throttle J’onn. Because so many things suddenly made so much sense. I should have been able to access that module from the time I turned fifteen or so. Withholding it from me was NOT looking after me as he promised Jeremiah he would!”

“What things made sense?”

Kara shook her head sorrowfully. “My parents never intended me to be left in the dark, aping everyone around me and assuming Kryptonians experience the same thing. In fact, we don’t have a generalized onset of hormones on reaching puberty. We start being _able_ to produce those hormones but we only _actually_ produce them in the presence of a few, a _very_ few, individuals and only after knowing them for a while, because for Kryptonians, physical attractiveness is not sufficient – we have to be attracted to other qualities too, qualities of the mind, qualities of the heart. I didn’t have that with James or Mon-El. My mind built mild and innocent little fantasies about kissing and embracing them, nothing more. My subconscious knew differently all along.”

Lena still didn’t understand but she was patient.

“Lena, from about the second or third time we met, I was always more aware, alert, _intent,_ in your presence. Normally my attention was divided by so many things, Catco work, superheroing work, problems with Alex or Winn or James, finding seclusion to change, coming and going unseen and unmissed from Catco. But with you, almost all of my attention was present, absorbing every detail, trying figure you out, holding up my end of the conversation. The rest of my attention floated out an indistinct distance away, a distance measured by my reaction time to anything hostile approaching within it. And despite being so aware, I felt tranquil, not agitating to be somewhere else, doing something else. Or ... well, I was tranquiI in _that_ sense, but also a bit excited and nervous because you were sort of unreadable at first, and I always wanted to make sure we had a reason to meet again. All of that? That was a Kryptonian hormonal reaction sparked by my subconscious.”

“Oh ... !” Lena was at a loss for words. She wanted to say that Kara took up all of her attention too when they were together, but she had the feeling that Kara had more of a point to make and she didn’t want to distract her. “Humans sometimes feel some of that, I think, but I’ve never heard it described so comprehensively,” she offered instead.

Kara nodded vigorously. “Maybe, but for us it’s predictable. It would have been instantly identifiable to any adult Kryptonian who grew up with proper guidance and education. So I was an idiot to think for so long that I was just interested in a new friend but in my defence, I was also uninformed. The thing is, without that kind of reaction ... um ...” she blushed, “... anything physical for Kryptonians can’t be more than just _sort of nice._ ”

Lena was dismayed for her. “You said your previous experiences were limited in scope; I didn’t realize that they weren’t completely satisfactory so far as they went.”

“Yeah, I didn’t explain that last time because I was still processing and honestly, I've only just now _really_ understood it ... now that I've felt ... the difference.”

Lena pinked up a little with self-conscious pleasure.

Kara had also discovered that those hormones generated a kind of nesting instinct, the tranquillity of being and belonging, the urge to create and enhance the circumstances in which that tranquillity might be enjoyed. In the Fortress of Solitude, she had despaired. Kryptonians had got it all wrong, favouring artificial genetic advancement over biological urges. That female nesting instinct was the evolutionary basis for family. It should never have been disdained. If her parents’ and their parents’ generations had not had lifetimes of repressing and ignoring it, if those intensely personal bonds between people had been allowed to thrive as nature intended, might they have stopped the despoiling of Krypton for the sake of their descendants? Might Krypton still have existed? Or might there at least have been some greater remnant of Kryptonian civilization than Argo City, Kal and herself?

But that was not a subject to be broached so early, when it might create the impression of higher expectations than Lena felt able to meet. When their relationship was much better established, she would tell Lena that, whether by the standards of Kryptonian society or those of Kryptonian biology, she and Kara suited each other down to the ground. Then it would just sound like they were meant to be, as Kara felt they were.

For now she reveled in the joy and comfort and fuzzy warmth of the moment, in Lena’s soft and contented gaze, the gentle hand stroking the nape of her neck and the long line of her back. It felt like all the yellow sun energy in her was surging warmly in Lena’s direction.

“Are you okay to get up now?” Lena smiled.

Kara leaned forward and rested her head on Lena’s shoulder. “I get the good Luthor,” she murmured disbelievingly into Lena’s warm, graceful neck. “The Lovely Luthor. My hero … my Babe Luth … my XenaLena,” she warbled.

Experimentally she wriggled the front of her shoulders up against Lena’s and sighed with pleasure. Years at boarding school had given Lena the habit of regular and vigorous exercise, so although she wasn’t competing in Iron Man races anytime soon, she was warm and firm and supple everywhere. Kara could feel their bodies seeking to adhere, flesh against flesh, through the barrier of clothing.

Lena blushed some more at Kara's wittering, but she chuckled quietly, sliding her arms around Kara’s head. “Are you sure you’re all right? You sound ... strange.”

“Mmm ... happy.”

Lena’s fingertips rubbed soothing circles on the back of Kara’s scalp. “Can you make it to the couch? Or at least the padded stools at the counter?” she enticed. “Some of us don’t have Kryptonian butts here.”

“Nnngh ...”

Faced with lassitude, Lena impishly took Kara’s earlobe between the insides of her index and middle fingers, paused, then skimmed the flat of her thumb over the tip protruding between her fingers with calculated teasing lightness, once, twice.

Kara yelped and went rigid for several seconds, during which she did not seem to breathe. Then jerkily she pulled back, stared and, to Lena’s vast satisfaction (and amusement), clamped her knees together forcefully.

She drew breath. “You ... are ... _lethal_!”

Lena smirked fiendishly and sucked on her bottom lip, hiding her pleased surprise. She _had_ intended to be suggestive but not in any serious way. Many humans aren’t all that sensitive to the touch of fingers there – tongues yes, fingers not so much. What a bonus that Kryptonians were ... or at least this one Kryptonian was! She had first hand knowledge that Kara’s skin was much like human skin in that it was soft and smooth. It even indented when pressed by a human finger. From this she had deduced that Kara’s invulnerability, like her other powers, came from yellow sun energy repelling blows or fire or most radiation, and not from the actual biomatter which constituted her bones, tissues and flesh, otherwise Kara would have been too dense and heavy for floors to support, even when solar flared or without powers for some other reason, and would feel like stone. Kara could use a phone and keyboard without destroying them, so her touch sensitivity had to be at least as good as a human’s. Well, that had just been confirmed. So Kara must have the equivalent of human nerve endings. It followed, and the fact Kara loved hugs reinforced this, that she had to be able to feel compression and impacts and temperature: they just didn’t cause pain or damage or even discomfort to her in general because the yellow sun energy warded off those effects. Lena didn't want to question Kara too much. She would reserve her questions for when they were absolutely necessary. She was Lena Luthor: she could jolly well figure out the rest instead of making Kara feel like a scientific specimen under analysis.

Groaning, Kara wagged a finger at her, rolled to her feet and staggered to the kitchen counter. She held out her arms.

Lena backed away. “It’s getting late. I’m making dinner. And Dodo has to eat too.”

“Tricked me!” Kara grabbed the salt cellar and pretended to glare at it.

“I wanted you to be comfortable!” Lena said indignantly into the open refrigerator. “So sue me! We’re talking food for _your_ bottomless pit, _Kïndchen_!”

Okay, the cushioned bar stood _was_ preferable to the floor. Kara smiled at the blameless salt cellar. “So are the Luthors of German origin? Like Martin Luther?”

“Generations ago, yes. Don’t ask me about Lillian, though. She never introduced any family of her own to me.”

“Seriously, Martin Luther?”

“Only very indirectly. My father had a genealogy tree done when I was in school.” Lena frowned. “Come to think of it, Lillian’s family should be on it. I’d better dig it out, figure out if there are any obsessive members of her family that might come out of the woodwork. As if one problem at a time isn’t enough.”

“What problem do you have now?” Kara lasered in alertly.

She learned about the cabal that had targeted the L-Corp CEO in Shanghai while watching said CEO making a beef stir fry and rice. Lena wasn’t one for elaborate and time-consuming cooking but at home she made simple meals with careless ease.

“Who are they?” Kara demanded.

“Do not go threatening them, please. Right now, apart from whoever was conducting Lillian’s surveillance on me, no one knows how friendly I am with Supergirl. That’s a nice tactical surprise I’d like to keep close to my vest.” The story Kara would publish about Supergirl’s retrieval was that ‘government forces’ had been responsible for it. Lena was more than happy not to be associated with her adoptive mother’s death. “Oh! Hey, take over stirring for a second, please.”

Lena darted off and came back with a similar set of ear studs to those that had been destroyed and laid it on the kitchen counter. “Just a reminder to get these on you before you leave. If you want.”

Absently Kara nodded. “The transmatter portal is big news. This is a good story.”

Lena scratched at her eyebrow. “Unless someone asks when we ... ah ... started dating.”

“Dating ...” Kara smiled dreamily.

“Focus, sweetie. I don’t see how you can do the story.”

“Clark and Lois can,” Kara decided. “If you’re willing to let them have your investigative reports so far.”

“That ... is actually an excellent idea. I was just planning to accelerate a press release about the portals only being available for disaster relief and L-Corp internal use initially. It’s premature because the units are still in production, but I’ll make the announcement because once the shipping moguls know that they'll have time to make new plans for their future businesses, it should take some of the heat off me. I had to go in this morning to get things started with the WTO. That’s where Dodo’s human went first today. As we speak, he’s on a plane going to meet with my Head Legal so they can introduce it to the UN together.”

The only portals currently in production wouldn’t be able to transport anything living and would shut down if they detected positive scans for any kind of radiation, signal emission or certain dangerous substances. No one could use them for troops or bombs. There was a long political road to go before portals could be made available for cargo and then personal transport without causing economic disaster to too many. L-Corp’s savings in shipping alone would justify the capital cost of developing and building the portals. This would satisfy the board for a while but sooner or later, they would be chafing for L-Corp to make and sell as many as possible and Lena would have to hold them back by sheer force of will until enough countries had implemented plans for retraining and redeployment of the vast number of people involved in the freight and transport industries.

“I'm not banking on that to make them pull the hit,” Kara frowned. “I may be optimistic but when it comes to commercial greed ...” Abruptly she turned off the stove. “I’ll call Clark now. Can you see about getting them those reports?” She scrolled through her phone. “Here’s Lois’s email. And Clark’s.”

It was half an hour before they were able to return to finish cooking the massive amount of stir fry.

Kara watched with jealous incredulity as Lena ladled a generous quantity of it into a dog bowl with rice and stirred it to help it cool. Dodo was a stupendous dog, but ... “You’re feeding her people food?” _My_ food?!

“She’s a family dog,” Lena shrugged. “So she will sit beside the dining table and eat the same food we do at the same time we do. It will give her the sense of being family. It’s what her human does with her.” She rolled her eyes, remembering the mini-lecture to which Torvald had subjected her when he came back to the office from packing his luggage and handed Dodo over to her.

“But what about the dog food?” Kara gestured at the bag of kibble.

“That’s just for occasional treats and snacks. Not as a bribe.” Lena cocked her head at Kara’s perplexed look. “I believe the idea is for her to identify with her human family. It’s them with whom she eats, plays and socializes. She’ll consider other dogs irrelevant because they aren’t her family. So she’ll ignore them unless they invade her territory. She’ll always come when called because she doesn’t have business of her own with other dogs or things that she can deem more important than family calling for her. If the family becomes her world, that’s half the training done right there because she’ll obey for affection and approval rather than food. It’s brilliantly simple, really.” She smiled in a way that Kara couldn’t call anything but perversely cat-like.

“It’s Machiavellian!”

“Certainly not, it’s how families lived with dogs for centuries, before specialized dog food, before puppy playgroups ...” Lena chuckled as she ladled their portions onto dinner plates. “Here. If you take these and the rice out and let Dodo in, I’ll bring the rest.”

As they ate (and Kara needn't have worried, Lena had made plenty), Kara said thoughtfully, “I think we should have the red sun lamp on whenever we even kiss.”

“If you think that's best. Wait. Didn’t you say years ago that you caught Mike having relations with Eve Tessmacher somewhere in the Catco building? I thought nothing of it at the time, but I've just put it together that since he was Mon-El and therefore Daxamite ... well, presumably there were no red sun lamps there.”

Kara gawped. “I’d forgotten! I have no idea how he managed that. Maybe I was wrong about Clark and Lois then but I’m not taking chances with you. Lena, I could completely accidentally bite off your lips!”

“Gross!” Lena shuddered. “You don’t have to convince me. I was just curious.”

“Like I said, I don’t want to risk it. Maybe once we’re confident, we can find ways to experiment safely, but not now ... and ... um ... I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but just in case, I brought the makings of a couple more red sun lamps. The one you already have can go in the room I normally use here. I thought we should have one for your room and a larger one ... a set really ... for the living room?”

Kara looked so hopeful that Lena’s heart gave a definite little thump. She looked down, smiling, to where Dodo had flopped at her feet after inhaling what had been in her bowl. Fondly she rubbed her foot against Dodo’s furry flank. “If you prefer that the whole house has them, it can happen. I can use table and standing lamps for reading. Just remember to make sure you carry a plentiful supply of those Epi-pens.”

“Not yet – Alex is still making the first batch - but I will.”

“All right. Tomorrow we’ll install what you brought with you. Leave the rest of the house to me. But it’s night now and I don’t like the idea of you being underpowered without a means of quick recovery.”

Kara pouted.

“We’ll sleep early and wake early and then I’ll come to your room for ... mmm ... snuggle practice. We can use the red sun lamp then. With the sun coming up, you can recharge easily afterwards,” Lena offered, as much for her own sake as Kara’s. “Anyway Dodo will need to be let out, so early is good.” Hearing her name, the dog sat up.

“YES!” Kara pumped her fist and raced off to plug the red sun lamp in her room.

Lena grinned and petted Dodo’s head, which was now in her lap. There was a fuzzy light feeling in her chest. With some wonder, she decided that it was happiness.

...


End file.
